THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
EDWIN  CORLE 

PRESENTED  BY 
JEAN  CORLE 


MY  DISCOVERY  OF  ENGLAND 


BY  STEPHEN  LEACOCK 

WINSOME  WINNIE 

FRENZIED  FICTION 

FURTHER  FOOLISHNESS 

BEHIND  THE  BEYOND 

NONSENSE  NOVELS 

LITERARY  LAPSES 

SUNSHINE  SKETCHES 

ARCADIAN  ADVENTURES 

WITH  THE  IDLE  RICH 

MOONBEAMS  FROM  THE 
LARGER  LUNACY 

THE  HOHENZOLLERNS 
IN  AMERICA 

THE  UNSOLVED  RIDDLE 
OF  SOCIAL  JUSTICE 

ESSAYS  AND  LITERARY 
STUDIES 


BY    STEPHEN  LEACOCK 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1922 


COPYBIOHT,    1922, 

Bl  DODD,  HEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


PHINTID    IN     TM«     U.    •     A.  BY 

•OOK      MANUFACTURERS 

•ANWAV  NIW      JIBBtT 


College 
Library 


PR 


Introduction  of  Mr.  Stephen  Lea- 

cock  Given  by  Sir  Owen  Seaman 

on  the  Occasion  of  His  First  Lec- 

ture in  London 

LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN: 

It  is  usual  on  these  occasions  for  the  chair- 
man to  begin  something  like  this  :  "The  lecturer, 
I  am  sure,  needs  no  introduction  from  me" 
And  indeed,  when  I  have  been  the  lecturer  and 
somebody  else  has  been  the  chairman,  I  have 
more  than  once  suspected  myself  of  being  the 
better  man  of  the  two.  Of  course  I  hope  I 
should  always  have  the  good  manners  —  I  am 
sure  Mr.  Leacock  has  —  to  disguise  that  sus- 
picion. However,  one  has  to  go  through  these 
formalities,  and  I  will  therefore  introduce  the 
lecturer  to  you, 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  this  is  Mr.  Stephen 
Leacock.  Mr.  Leacock,  this  is  the  flower  of 
London  intelligence  —  or  perhaps  I  should  say 


Introduction 


one  of  the  flowers;  the  rest  are  coming  to 
your  other  lectures. 

In  ordinary  social  life  one  stops  at  an  intro- 
duction and  does  not  proceed  to  personal  de- 
tails. But  behaviour  on  the  platform,  as  on 
the  stage,  is  seldom  ordinary.  I  will  there- 
fore tell  you  a  thing  or  two  about  Mr.  Leacock. 
In  the  first  place,  by  vocation  he  is  a  Professor 
of  Political  Economy,  and  he  practises  humour 
— frenzied  fiction  instead  of  frenzied  finance — 
by  way  of  recreation.  There  he  differs  a  good 
deal  from  me,  who  have  to  study  the  products 
of  humour  for  my  living,  and  by  way  of  recre- 
ation read  Mr.  Leacock  on  political  economy. 

Further,  Mr.  Leacock  is  all-British,  being 
English  by  birth  and  Canadian  by  residence.  I 
mention  this  for  two  reasons:  firstly,  because 
England  and  the  Empire  are  very  proud  to 
claim  him  for  their  own,  and,  secondly,  because 
I  do  not  wish  his  nationality  to  be  confused 
with  that  of  his  neighbours  on  the  other  side. 
For  English  and  American  humourists  have  not 
always  seen  eye  to  eye.  When  we  fail  to  appre- 
ciate their  humour  they  say  we  are  too  dull 

vi 


Introduction 


and  effete  to  understand  it:  and  when  they  do 
not  appreciate  ours  they  say  we  haven't  got  any. 

Now  Mr.  Leacock's  humour  is  British  by 
heredity;  but  he  has  caught  something  of  the 
spirit  of  American  humour  by  force  of  asso- 
ciation. This  puts  him  in  a  similar  position 
to  that  in  which  I  found  myself  once  when  I 
took  the  liberty  of  swimming  across  a  rather 
large  loch  in  Scotland.  After  climbing  into 
the  boat  I  was  in  the  act  of  drying  myself 
when  I  was  accosted  by  the  proprietor  of  the 
hotel  adjacent  to  the  shore.  "You  have  no 
business  to  be  bathing  here,"  he  shouted.  "Fm 
not,"  I  said;  "I'm  bathing  on  the  other  side." 
In  the  same  way,  if  anyone  on  either  side  of 
the  water  is  unintelligent  enough  to  criticise 
Mr.  Leacock's  humour,  he  can  always  say  it 
comes  from  the  other  side.  But  the  truth  is 
that  his  humour  contains  all  that  is  best  in  the 
humour  of  both  hemispheres. 

Having  fulfilled  my  duty  as  chairman,  in  that 

I  have  told  you  nothing  that  you  did  not  know 

before — except,   perhaps,   my  swimming  feat, 

which  never  got  into  the  Press  because  I  have 

vii 


Introduction 


a  very  bad  publicity  agent — I  will  not  detain 
you  longer  from  what  you  are  really  wanting 
to  get  at;  but  ask  Mr.  Lcacock  to  proceed  at 
once  with  his  lecture  on  "Frenzied  Fiction." 


vm 


CONTENTS 


I.    THE  BALANCE  OF  TRADE  iisr  IMPRES- 
SIONS    3 

II.    I  AM  INTERVIEWED  BY  THE  PRESS        .  19 

III.  IMPRESSIONS  OF  LONDON      ...  29 

IV.  A  CLEAR  VIEW  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT 

AND  POLITICS  OF  ENGLAND    .       .  51 

V.    OXFORD  AS  I  SEE  IT      ....  79 
VT.    THE   BRITISH    AND   THE    AMERICAN 

PRESS 119 

VII.    BUSINESS  IN  ENGLAND  .       .       .       .153 

VIII.    Is  PROHIBITION  COMING  TO  ENGLAND?  169 

IX.    "WE  HAVE  WITH  Us  TO-NIGHT"       .  191 
X.    HAVE  THE  ENGLISH  ANY  SENSE  OF 

HUMOUR?         .....  223 


THE  BALANCE  OF  TRADE  IN 
IMPRESSIONS 


/ — The  Balance  of  Trade  in 
Impressions 

FOR  some  years  past  a  rising  tide  of  lec- 
turers and  literary  men  from  England 
has  washed  upon  the  shores  of  our 
North  American  continent.  The  pur- 
pose of  each  one  of  them  is  to  make  a  new  dis- 
covery of  America.  They  come  over  to  us 
travelling  in  great  simplicity,  and  they  return 
in  the  ducal  suite  of  the  Aquitanla.  They 
carry  away  with  them  their  impressions  of 
America,  and  when  they  reach  England  they  sell 
them.  This  export  of  impressions  has  now 
been  going  on  so  long  that  the  balance  of  trade 
in  impressions  is  all  disturbed.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  the  Americans  and  Canadians  have 
been  too  generous  in  this  matter  of  giving 
away  impressions*  We  emit  them  with  the 
careless  case  of  a  glow-worm,  and  like  the 
glow-worm  ask  for  nothing  in  return. 

3 


My  Discovery  of  England 


But  this  irregular  and  one-sided  traffic  has 
now  assumed  such  great  proportions  that  we 
are  compelled  to  ask  whether  it  is  right  to  allow 
these  people  to  carry  away  from  us  impressions 
of  the  very  highest  commercial  value  without 
giving  us  any  pecuniary  compensation  what- 
ever. British  lecturers  have  been  known  to 
land  in  New  York,  pass  the  customs,  drive  up- 
town in  a  closed  taxi,  and  then  forward  to 
England  from  the  closed  taxi  itself  ten  dollars' 
worth  of  impressions  of  American  national 
character.  I  have  myself  seen  an  English  lit- 
erary man, — the  biggest,  I  believe :  he  had  at 
least  the  appearance  of  it, — sit  in  the  cor- 
ridor of  a  fashionable  New  York  hotel  and  look 
gloomily  into  his  hat,  and  then  from  his  very 
hat  produce  an  estimate  of  the  genius  of  Amer- 
ica at  twenty  cents  a  word.  The  nice  question 
as  to  whose  twenty  cents  that  was  never  seems 
to  have  occurred  to  him. 

I  am  not  writing  in  the  faintest  spirit  of 
jealousy.  I  quite  admit  the  extraordinary 
ability  that  is  involved  in  this  peculiar  suscepti- 
bility to  impressions.  I  have  estimated  that 

4 


The  Balance  of  Trade  in  Impressions 

some  of  these  English  visitors  have  been  able 
to  receive  impressions  at  the  rate  of  four  to  the 
second;  in  fact,  they  seem  to  get  them  every 
time  they  see  twenty  cents.  But  without  jeal- 
ousy or  complaint,  I  do  feel  that  somehow  these 
impressions  are  inadequate  and  fail  to  depict 
us  as  we  really  are. 

Let  me  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Here  are 
some  of  the  impressions  of  New  York,  gath- 
ered from  visitors'  discoveries  of  America  and 
reproduced  not  perhaps  word  for  word  but  as 
closely  as  I  can  remember  them.  "New  York," 
writes  one,  "nestling  at  the  foot  of  the  Hud- 
son, gave  me  an  impression  of  cosiness,  of  tiny 
graciousness :  in  short,  of  weeness."  But  com- 
pare this — "New  York,"  according  to  another 
discoverer  of  America,  "gave  me  an  impression 
of  size,  of  vastness;  there  seemed  to  be  a  big- 
ness about  it  not  found  in  smaller  places."  A 
third  visitor  writes,  "New  York  struck  me  as 
hard,  cruel,  almost  inhuman."  This,  I  think, 
was  because  his  taxi  driver  had  charged  him 
three  dollars.  "The  first  thing  that  struck  me 
in  New  York,"  writes  another,  "was  the  Statue 

5 


3f  y  Discovery  of  England 


of  Liberty."  But,  after  all,  that  was  only 
natural:  it  was  the  first  thing  that  could  reach 
him. 

Nor  is  it  only  the  impressions  of  the  metrop- 
olis that  seem  to  fall  short  of  reality.  Let  me 
quote  a  few  others  taken  at  random  here  and 
there  over  the  continent. 

"I  took  from  Pittsburg,"  says  an  English 
visitor,  "an  impression  of  something  that  I 
could  hardly  define — an  atmosphere  rather 
than  an  idea." 

All  very  well.  But,  after  all,  had  he  the 
right  to  take  it?  Granted  that  Pittsburg  has 
an  atmosphere  rather  than  an  idea,  the  attempt 
to  carry  away  this  atmosphere  surely  borders 
on  rapacity. 

"New  Orleans,"  writes  another  visitor, 
"opened  her  arms  to  me  and  bestowed  upon  me 
the  soft  and  languorous  kiss  of  the  Caribbean." 
This  statement  may  or  may  not  be  true :  but  in 
any  case  it  hardly  seems  the  fair  thing  to  men- 
tion it. 

"Chicago,"  according  to  another  book  of  dis- 
covery, "struck  me  as  a  large  city.  Situated  as 

6 


The  Balance  of  Trade  in  Impressions 

it  is  and  where  it  is,  it  seems  destined  to  be  a 
place  of  importance." 

Or  here,  again,  is  a  form  of  "impression" 
that  recurs  again  and  again — "At  Cleveland  I 
felt  a  distinct  note  of  optimism  in  the  air." 

This  same  note  of  optimism  is  found  also  at 
Toledo,  at  Toronto — in  short,  I  believe  it  in- 
dicates nothing  more  than  that  some  one  gave 
the  visitor  a  cigar.  Indeed  it  generally  occurs 
during  the  familiar  scene  in  which  the  visitor 
describes  his  cordial  reception  in  an  unsuspect- 
ing American  town :  thus : 

"I  was  met  at  the  station  (called  in  America 
the  depot)  by  a  member  of  the  Municipal  Coun- 
cil driving  his  own  motor  car.  After  giving 
me  an  excellent  cigar,  he  proceeded  to  drive 
me  about  the  town,  to  various  points  of  inter- 
est, including  the  municipal  abattoir,  where  he 
gave  me  another  excellent  cigar,  the  Carnegie 
public  library,  the  First  National  Bank  (the 
courteous  manager  of  which  gave  me  an  excel- 
lent cigar)  and  the  Second  Congregational 
Church  where  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting 
the  pastor.  The  pastor,  who  appeared  a. 

7 


My  Discovery  of  England 


man  of  breadth  and  culture,  gave  me  another 
cigar.  In  the  evening  a  dinner,  admirably 
cooked  and  excellently  served,  was  tendered  to 
me  at  a  leading  hotel."  And  of  course  he  took 
it.  After  which  his  statement  that  he  carried 
away  from  the  town  a  feeling  of  optimism 
explains  itself:  he  had  four  cigars,  the  dinner, 
and  half  a  page  of  impressions  at  twenty  cents 
a  word. 

Nor  is  it  only  by  the  theft  of  impressions 
that  we  suffer  at  the  hands  of  these  English 
discoverers  of  America.  It  is  a  part  of  the 
system  also  that  we  have  to  submit  to  being 
lectured  to  by  our  talented  visitors.  It  is  now 
quite  understood  that  as  soon  as  an  English 
literary  man  finishes  a  book  he  is  rushed  across 
to  America  to  tell  the  people  of  the  United 
States  and  Canada  all  about  it,  and  how  he 
came  to  write  it.  At  home,  in  his  own  country, 
they  don't  care  how  he  came  to  write  it.  He's 
written  it  and  that's  enough.  But  in  America 
it  is  different.  One  month  after  the  distin- 
guished author's  book  on  The  Boyhood  of  Bot- 
ticelli has  appeared  in  London,  he  is  seen  to 

8 


The  Balance  of  Trade  in  Impressions 

land  in  New  York  very  quietly  out  of  one  of 
the  back  portholes  of  the  Olympic.  That  same 
afternoon  you  will  find  him  in  an  armchair  in 
one  of  the  big  hotels  giving  off  impressions  of 
America  to  a  group  of  reporters.  After  which 
notices  appear  in  all  the  papers  to  the  effect 
that  he  will  lecture  in  Carnegie  Hall  on  Botti- 
celli the  Boy.  The  audience  is  assured  before- 
hand. It  consists  of  all  the  people  who  feel 
that  they  have  to  go  because  they  know  all 
about  Botticelli  and  all  the  people  who  feel 
that  they  have  to  go  because  they  don't  know 
anything  about  Botticelli.  By  this  means  the 
lecturer  is  able  to  rake  the  whole  country  from 
Montreal  to  San  Francisco  with  Botticelli  the 
Boy.  Then  he  turns  round,  labels  his  lecture 
Botticelli  the  Man,  and  rakes  it  all  back  again. 
All  the  way  across  the  continent  and  back  he 
emits  impressions,  estimates  of  national  char- 
acter, and  surveys  of  American  genius.  He 
sails  from  New  York  in  a  blaze  of  publicity, 
with  his  cordon  of  reporters  round  him,  and  a 
month  later  publishes  his  book  America  as  I 
Saw  It.  It  is  widely  read — in  America. 

9 


My  Discovery  of  England 


In  the  course  of  time  a  very  considerable 
public  feeling  was  aroused  in  the  United  States 
and  Canada  over  this  state  of  affairs.  The  lack 
of  reciprocity  in  it  seemed  unfair.  It  was  felt 
(or  at  least  I  felt)  that  the  time  had  come 
when  some  one  ought  to  go  over  and  take  some 
impressions  off  England.  The  choice  of  such 
a  person  (my  choice)  fell  upon  myself.  By 
an  arrangement  with  the  Geographical  Society 
of  America,  acting  in  conjunction  with  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society  of  England  (to 
both  of  whom  I  communicated  my  proposal) ,  I 
went  at  my  own  expense. 

It  is  scarcely  feasible  to  give  here  full  details 
in  regard  to  my  outfit  and  equipment,  though 
I  hope  to  do  so  in  a  later  and  more  extended 
account  of  my  expedition.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  my  outfit,  which  was  modelled  on  the  equip- 
ment of  English  lecturers  in  America,  included 
a  complete  suit  of  clothes,  a  dress  shirt  for  lec- 
turing in,  a  fountain  pen  and  a  silk  hat.  The 
dress  shirt,  I  may  say  for  the  benefit  of  other 
travellers,  proved  invaluable.  The  silk  hat, 

10 


The  Balance  of  Trade  in  Impressions 

however,  is  no  longer  used  in  England  except 
perhaps  for  scrambling  eggs  in. 

I  pass  over  the  details  of  my  pleasant  voyage 
from  New  York  to  Liverpool.  During  the 
last  fifty  years  so  many  travellers  have  made 
the  voyage  across  the  Atlantic  that  it  is  now 
impossible  to  obtain  any  impressions  from  the 
ocean  of  the  slightest  commercial  value.  My 
readers  will  recall  the  fact  that  Washington 
Irving,  as  far  back  as  a  century  ago,  chronicled 
the  pleasure  that  one  felt  during  an  Atlantic 
voyage  in  idle  day  dreams  while  lying  prone 
upon  the  bowsprit  and  watching  the  dolphins 
leaping  in  the  crystalline  foam.  Since  his  time 
so  many  gifted  writers  have  attempted  to  do 
the  same  thing  that  on  the  large  Atlantic  liners 
the  bowsprit  has  been  removed,  or  at  any  rate 
a  notice  put  up :  "Authors  are  requested  not  to 
lie  prostrate  on  the  bowsprit."  But  even  with- 
out this  advantage,  three  or  four  generations 
of  writers  have  chronicled  with  great  minute- 
ness their  sensations  during  the  transit.  I  need 
only  say  that  my  sensations  were  just  as  good 

II 


My  Discovery  of  England 


as  theirs.  I  will  content  myself  with  chron- 
icling the  fact  that  during  the  voyage  we  passed 
two  dolphins,  one  whale  and  one  iceberg  (none 
of  them  moving  very  fast  at  the  time) ,  and  that 
on  the  fourth  day  out  the  sea  was  so  rough  that 
the  Captain  said  that  in  forty  years  he  had 
never  seen  such  weather.  One  of  the  steerage 
passengers,  we  were  told,  was  actually  washed 
overboard:  I  think  it  was  over  board  that  he 
was  washed,  but  it  may  have  been  on  board  the 
ship  itself. 

I  pass  over  also  the  incidents  of  my  landing 
in  Liverpool,  except  perhaps  to  comment  upon 
the  extraordinary  behaviour  of  the  English  cus- 
toms officials.  Without  wishing  in  any  way  to 
disturb  international  relations,  one  cannot  help 
noticing  the  rough  and  inquisitorial  methods  of 
the  English  customs  men  as  compared  with  the 
gentle  and  affectionate  ways  of  the  American 
officials  at  New  York.  The  two  trunks  that 
I  brought  with  me  were  dragged  brutally  into 
an  open  shed,  the  strap  of  one  of  them  was 
rudely  unbuckled,  while  the  lid  of  the  other 
was  actually  lifted  at  least  four  inches.  The 

12 


The  Balance  of  Trade  in  Impressions 

trunks  were  then  roughly  scrawled  with  chalk, 
the  lids  slammed  to,  and  that  was  all.  Not  one 
of  the  officials  seemed  to  care  to  look  at  my 
things  or  to  have  the  politeness  to  pretend  to 
want  to.  I  had  arranged  my  dress  suit  and 
my  pyjamas  so  as  to  make  as  effective  a  display 
as  possible :  a  New  York  customs  officer  would 
have  been  delighted  with  it.  Here  they  simply 
passed  it  over.  "Do  open  this  trunk,"  I  asked 
one  of  the  officials,  "and  see  my  pyjamas."  "I 
don't  think  it  is  necessary,  sir,"  the  man  an- 
swered. There  was  a  coldness  about  it  that 
cut  me  to  the  quick. 

But  bad  as  is  the  conduct  of  the  English  cus- 
toms men,  the  immigration  officials  are  even 
worse.  I  could  not  help  being  struck  by  the 
dreadful  carelessness  with  which  people  are  ad- 
mitted into  England.  There  are,  it  is  true,  a 
group  of  officials  said  to  be  in  charge  of  immi- 
gration, but  they  know  nothing  of  the  discrim- 
inating care  exercised  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic. 

"Do  you  want  to  know,"  I  asked  one  of 
them,  "whether  I  am  a  polygamist?" 

13 


My  Discovery  of  England 


"No,  sir,"  he  said  very  quietly. 

* 'Would  you  like  me  to  tell  you  whether  I 
am  fundamentally  opposed  to  any  and  every 
system  of  government?" 

The  man  seemed  mystified.  "No,  sir,"  he 
said.  "I  don't  know  that  I  would." 

"Don't  you  care?"  I  asked. 

"Well,  not  particularly,  sir,"  he  answered. 

I  was  determined  to  arouse  him  from  his 
lethargy. 

"Let  me  tell  you,  then,"  I  said,  "that  I  am 
an  anarchistic  polygamist,  that  I  am  opposed 
to  all  forms  of  government,  that  I  object  to  any 
kind  of  revealed  religion,  that  I  regard  the 
state  and  property  and  marriage  as  the  mere 
tyranny  of  the  bourgeoisie,  and  that  I  want  to 
see  class  hatred  carried  to  the  point  where  it 
forces  every  one  into  brotherly  love.  Now,  do 
I  get  in?" 

The  official  looked  puzzled  for  a  minute. 
"You  are  not  Irish,  are  you,  sir?"  he  said. 

"No." 

"Then  I  think  you  can  come  in  all  right,"  he 
answered. 

14 


The  Balance  of  Trade  in  Impressions 

The  journey  from  Liverpool  to  London,  like 
all  other  English  journeys,  is  short.  This  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  England  is  a  small  country : 
it  contains  only  50,000  square  miles,  whereas 
the  United  States,  as  every  one  knows,  contains 
three  and  a  half  billion.  I  mentioned  this  fact 
to  an  English  fellow  passenger  on  the  train, 
together  with  a  provisional  estimate  of  the 
American  corn  crop  for  1922 :  but  he  only  drew 
his  rug  about  his  knees,  took  a  sip  of  brandy 
from  his  travelling  flask,  and  sank  into  a  state 
resembling  death.  I  contented  myself  with 
jotting  down  an  impression  of  incivility  and 
paid  no  further  attention  to  my  fellow  trav- 
eller other  than  to  read  the  labels  on  his  lug- 
gage and  to  peruse  the  headings  of  his  news- 
paper by  peeping  over  his  shoulder. 

It  was  my  first  experience  of  travelling  with 
a  fellow  passenger  in  a  compartment  of  an 
English  train,  and  I  admit  now  that  I  was  as 
yet  ignorant  of  the  proper  method  of  conduct. 
Later  on  I  became  fully  conversant  with  the 
rule  of  travel  as  understood  in  England.  I 
should  have  known,  of  course,  that  I  must  on 

15 


My  Discovery  of  England 


no  account  speak  to  the  man.  But  I  should 
have  let  down  the  window  a  little  bit  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  a  strong  draught  on  his  ear. 
Had  this  failed  to  break  down  his  reserve  I 
should  have  placed  a  heavy  valise  in  the  rack 
over  his  head  so  balanced  that  it  might  fall  on 
him  at  any  moment.  Failing  this  again,  I 
could  have  blown  rings  of  smoke  at  him  or 
stepped  on  his  feet  under  the  pretence  of  look- 
ing out  of  the  window.  Under  the  English 
rule  as  long  as  he  bears  this  in  silence  you  are 
not  supposed  to  know  him.  In  fact,  he  is  not 
supposed  to  be  there.  You  and  he  each  pre- 
sume the  other  to  be  a  mere  piece  of  empty 
space.  But  let  him  once  be  driven  to  say, 
"Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon,  I  wonder  if  you  would 
mind  my  closing  the  window,"  and  he  is  lost. 
After  that  you  are  entitled  to  tell  him  anything 
about  the  corn  crop  that  you  care  to. 

But  in  the  present  case  I  knew  nothing  of 
this,  and  after  three  hours  of  charming  silence 
I  found  -myself  in  London. 


16 


II 

I  AM  INTERVIEWED  BY  THE 
PRESS 


//. — /  am  Interviewed  by  the  Press 

IMMEDIATELY    upon    my    arrival    in 
London  I  was  interviewed  by  the  Press. 
I  was  interviewed  in  all  twenty  times.     I 
am  not  saying  this  in  any  spirit  of  elation 
or  boastfulness.     I  am  simply  stating  it  as  a 
fact — interviewed  twenty  times,  sixteen  times 
by  men  and  twice  by  women.     But  as  I  feel 
that  the  results  of  these  interviews  were  not  all 
that  I  could  have  wished,  I  think  it  well  to 
make  some  public  explanation  of  what  hap- 
pened. 

The  truth  is  that  we  do  this  thing  so  differ- 
ently over  in  America  that  I  was  for  the  time 
being  completely  thrown  off  my  bearings.  The 
questions  that  I  had  every  right  to  expect  after 
many  years  of  American  and  Canadian  inter- 
views failed  to  appear. 

19 


My  Discovery  of  England 


I  pass  over  the  fact  that  being  interviewed 
for  five  hours  is  a  fatiguing  process.  I  lay 
no  claim  to  exemption  for  that.  But  to  that 
no  doubt  was  due  the  singular  discrepancies  as 
to  my  physical  appearance  which  I  detected  in 
the  London  papers. 

The  young  man  who  interviewed  me  imme- 
diately after  breakfast  described  me  as  "a  brisk, 
energetic  man,  still  on  the  right  side  of  forty, 
with  energy  in  every  movement." 

The  lady  who  wrote  me  up  at  1 1.30  reported 
that  my  hair  was  turning  grey,  and  that  there 
was  "a  peculiar  languor"  in  my  manner. 

And  at  the  end  the  boy  who  took  me  over  at 
a  quarter  to  two  said,  "The  old  gentleman  sank 
wearily  upon  a  chair  in  the  hotel  lounge.  His 
hair  is  almost  white." 

The  trouble  is  that  I  had  not  understood  that 
London  reporters  are  supposed  to  look  at  a 
man's  personal  appearance.  In  America  we 
never  bother  with  that.  We  simply  describe 
him  as  a  "dynamo."  For  some  reason  or  other 
it  always  pleases  everybody  to  be  called  a  "dy- 
namo," and  the  readers,  at  least  with  us,  like 

20 


I  am  Interviewed  by  the  Press 

to  read  about  people  who  are  "dynamos,"  and 
hardly  care  for  anything  else. 

In  the  case  of  very  old  men  we  sometimes 
call  them  "battle-horses"  or  "extinct  volca- 
noes," but  beyond  these  three  classes  we  hardly 
venture  on  description.  So  I  was  misled.  I 
had  expected  that  the  reporter  would  say: 
"As  soon  as  Mr.  Leacock  came  across  the  floor 
we  felt  we  were  in  the  presence  of  a  'dynamo' 
(or  an  'extinct  battle-horse'  as  the  case  may 
be) ."  Otherwise  I  would  have  kept  up  those 
energetic  movements  all  the  morning.  But 
they  fatigue  me,  and  I  did  not  think  them  neces- 
sary. But  I  let  that  pass. 

The  more  serious  trouble  was  the  questions 
put  to  me  by  the  reporters.  Over  in  our  chief 
centres  of  population  we  use  another  set  al- 
together. I  am  thinking  here  especially  of  the 
kind  of  interview  that  I  have  given  out  in 
Youngstown,  Ohio,  and  Richmond,  Indiana, 
and  Peterborough,  Ontario.  In  all  these 
places — for  example,  in  Youngstown,  Ohio — ; 
the  reporter  asks  as  his  first  question,  "What  is 
your  impression  of  Youngstown?" 

21 


My  Discovery  of  England 


In  London  they  don't.  They  seem  indif- 
ferent to  the  fate  of  their  city.  Perhaps  it  is 
only  English  pride.  For  all  I  know  they  may 
have  been  burning  to  know  this,  just  as  the 
Youngstown,  Ohio,  people  are,  and  were  too 
proud  to  ask.  In  any  case  I  will  insert  here 
the  answer  I  had  written  out  in  my  pocket-book 
(one  copy  for  each  paper — the  way  we  do  it  in 
Youngstown),  and  which  read: 

"London  strikes  me  as  emphatically  a  city 
with  a  future.  Standing  as  she  does  in  the 
heart  of  a  rich  agricultural  district  with  rail- 
road connection  in  all  directions,  and  resting, 
as  she  must,  on  a  bed  of  coal  and  oil,  I  prophesy 
that  she  will  one  day  be  a  great  city." 

The  advantage  of  this  is  that  it  enables  the 
reporter  to  get  just  the  right  kind  of  heading: 
PROPHESIES  BRIGHT  FUTURE  FOR  LONDON. 
Had  that  been  used  my  name  would  have  stood 
higher  there  than  it  does  to-day — unless  the 
London  people  are  very  different  from  the  peo- 
ple in  Youngstown,  which  I  doubt.  As  it  is 
they  don't  know  whether  their  future  is  bright 

22 


I  am  Interviewed  by  the  Press 

or  is  as  dark  as  mud.  But  it's  not  my  fault. 
The  reporters  never  asked  me, 

If  the  first  question  had  been  handled  prop- 
erly it  would  have  led  up  by  an  easy  and  pleas- 
ant transition  to  question  two,  which  always 
runs:  "Have  you  seen  our  factories?"  To 
which  the  answer  is : 

"I  have.  I  was  taken  out  early  this  morn- 
ing by  a  group  of  your  citizens  (whom  I  can- 
not thank  enough)  in  a  Ford  car  to  look  at 
your  pail  and  bucket  works.  At  eleven-thirty 
I  was  taken  out  by  a  second  group  in  what  was 
apparently  the  same  car  to  see  your  soap  works. 
I  understand  that  you  are  the  second  nail-mak- 
ing centre  east  of  the  Alleghenies,  and  I  am 
amazed  and  appalled.  This  afternoon  I  am 
to  be  taken  out  to  see  your  wonderful  system  of 
disposing  of  sewerage,  a  thing  which  has  fas- 
cinated me  from  childhood." 

Now  I  am  not  offering  any  criticism  of  the 
London  system  of  interviewing,  but  one  sees 
at  once  how  easy  and  friendly  for  all  concerned 
this  Youngstown  method  is;  how  much  better 

23 


My  Discovery  of  England 


it  works  than  the  London  method  of  asking 
questions  about  literature  and  art  and  difficult 
things  of  that  sort.  I  am  sure  that  there  must 
be  soap  works  and  perhaps  a  pail  factory  some- 
where in  London.  But  during  my  entire  time 
of  residence  there  no  one  ever  offered  to  take 
me  to  them.  As  for  the  sewerage — oh,  well, 
I  suppose  we  are  more  hospitable  in  America. 
Let  it  go  at  that. 

I  had  my  answer  all  written  and  ready,  say- 
ing: 

"I  understand  that  London  is  the  second 
greatest  hop-consuming,  the  fourth  hog-killing, 
and  the  first  egg-absorbing  centre  in  the  world." 

But  what  I  deplore  still  more,  and  I  think 
with  reason,  is  the  total  omission  of  the  famil- 
iar interrogation:  "What  is  your  impression  of 
our  women?" 

That's  where  the  reporter  over  on  our 
side  hits  the  nail  every  time.  That  is  the  point 
at  which  we  always  nudge  him  in  the  ribs  and 
buy  him  a  cigar,  and  at  which  youth  and  age 
join  in  a  sly  jest  together.  Here  again  the 

24 


I  am  Interviewed  by  the  Press 

sub-heading  comes  in  so  nicely:  THINKS 
YOUNGSTOWN  WOMEN  CHARMING.  And  they 
are.  They  are,  everywhere.  But  I  hate  to 
think  that  I  had  to  keep  my  impression  of  Lon- 
don women  unused  in  my  pocket  while  a  young 
man  asked  me  whether  I  thought  modern  litera- 
ture owed  more  to  observation  and  less  to  in- 
spiration than  some  other  kind  of  literature. 

Now  that's  exactly  the  kind  of  question,  the 
last  one,  that  the  London  reporters  seem  to 
harp  on.  They  seemed  hipped  about  litera- 
ture; and  their  questions  are  too  difficult.  One 
asked  me  whether  the  American  drama  was 
structurally  inferior  to  the  French.  I  don't 
call  that  fair.  I  told  him  I  didn't  know;  that 
I  used  to  know  the  answer  to  it  when  I  was  at 
college,  but  that  I  had  forgotten  it,  and  that, 
anyway,  I  am  too  well  off  now  to  need  to  re- 
member it. 

That  question  is  only  one  of  a  long  list  that 
they  asked  me  about  art  and  literature.  I 
missed  nearly  all  of  them,  except  one  as  to 
whether  I  thought  Al  Jolson  or  Frank  Tinney 

25 


My  Discovery  of  England 


was  the  higher  artist,  and  even  that  one  was 
asked  by  an  American  who  is  wasting  himself 
on  the  London  Press. 

I  don't  want  to  speak  in  anger.  But  I  say 
it  frankly,  the  atmosphere  of  these  young  men 
is  not  healthy,  and  I  felt  that  I  didn't  want  to 
see  them  any  more. 

Had  there  been  a  reporter  of  the  kind  we 
have  at  home  in  Montreal  or  Toledo  or  Spring- 
field, Illinois,  I  would  have  welcomed  him  at 
my  hotel.  He  could  have  taken  me  out  in  a 
Ford  car  and  shown  me  a  factory  and  told  me 
how  many  cubic  feet  of  water  go  down  the 
Thames  in  an  hour.  I  should  have  been  glad 
of  his  society,  and  he  and  I  would  have  to- 
gether made  up  the  kind  of  copy  that  people  of 
his  class  and  mine  read.  But  I  felt  that  if  any 
young  man  came  along  to  ask  about  the 
structure  of  the  modern  drama,  he  had  better 
go  on  to  the  British  Museum. 

Meantime  as  the  reporters  entirely  failed  to 
elicit  the  large  fund  of  information  which  I 
acquired,  I  reserve  my  impressions  of  London 
for  a  chapter  by  themselves. 

26 


in 

IMPRESSIONS  OF  LONDON 


///. — Impressions  of  London 

BEFORE  setting  down  my  impressions  of 
the  great  English  metropolis, — a  phrase 
which  I  have  thought  out  as  a  desig- 
nation for  London, — I  think  it  proper 
to  offer  an  initial  apology.  I  find  that  I  re- 
ceive impressions  with  great  difficulty  and  have 
nothing  of  that  easy  facility  in  picking  them 
up  which  is  shown  by  British  writers  on  Amer- 
ica. I  remember  Hugh  Walpole  telling  me 
that  he  could  hardly  walk  down  Broadway 
without  getting  at  least  three  dollars'  worth 
and  on  Fifth  Avenue  five  dollars'  worth;  and 
I  recollect  that  St.  John  Ervine  came  up  to  my 
house  in  Montreal,  drank  a  cup  of  tea,  bor- 
rowed some  tobacco,  and  got  away  with  sixty 
dollars'  worth  of  impressions  of  Canadian  life 
and  character. 

For  this  kind  of  thing  I  have  only  a  despair- 
29 


My  Discovery  of  'England 


ing  admiration.  I  can  get  an  impression  if  I 
am  given  time  and  can  think  about  it  before- 
hand. But  it  requires  thought.  This  fact  was 
all  the  more  distressing  to  me  in  as  much  as 
one  of  the  leading  editors  of  America  had 
made  me  a  proposal,  as  honourable  to  him  as  it 
was  lucrative  to  me,  that  immediately  on  my 
arrival  in  London, — or  just  before  it, — I 
should  send  him  a  thousand  words  on  the  genius 
of  the  English,  and  five  hundred  words  on  the 
spirit  of  London,  and  two  hundred  words  of 
personal  chat  with  Lord  Northcliffe.  This 
contract  I  was  unable  to  fulfil  except  the  per- 
sonal chat  with  Lord  Northcliffe,  which  proved 
an  easy  matter  as  he  happened  to  be  away  in 
Australia. 

But  I  have  since  pieced  together  my  impres- 
sions as  conscientiously  as  I  could  and  I  present 
them  here.  If  they  seem  to  be  a  little  bit 
modelled  on  British  impressions  of  America  I 
admit  at  once  that  the  influence  is  there.  We 
writers  all  act  and  react  on  one  another;  and 
when  I  see  a  good  thing  in  another  man's  book 
I  react  on  it  at  once. 

30 


Impressions  of  London 


London,  the  name  of  which  is  already  known 
to  millions  of  readers  of  this  book,  is  beautifully 
situated  on  the  river  Thames,  which  here 
sweeps  in  a  wide  curve  with  much  the  same 
breadth  and  majesty  as  the  St.  Jo  River  at 
South  Bend,  Indiana.  London,  like  South  Bend 
itself,  is  a  city  of  clean  streets  and  admirable 
sidewalks,  and  has  an  excellent  water  supply. 
One  is  at  once  struck  by  the  number  of  excel- 
lent and  well-appointed  motor  cars  that  one 
sees  on  every  hand,  the  neatness  of  the  shops 
and  the  cleanliness  and  cheerfulness  of  the  faces 
of  the  people.  In  short,  as  an  English  visitor 
said  of  Peterborough,  Ontario,  there  is  a  dis- 
tinct note  of  optimism  in  the  air.  I  forget  who 
it  was  who  said  this,  but  at  any  rate  I  have 
been  in  Peterborough  myself  and  I  have  seen  it. 

Contrary  to  my  expectations  and  contrary  to 
all  our  Transatlantic  precedents,  I  was  not  met 
at  the  depot  by  one  of  the  leading  citizens,  him- 
self a  member  of  the  Municipal  Council,  driv- 
ing his  own  motor  car.  He  did  not  tuck  a  fur 
rug  about  my  knees,  present  me  with  a  really  ex- 
cellent cigar  and  proceed  to  drive  me  about  the 

31 


My  Discovery  of  England 


town  so  as  to  show  me  the  leading  points  of 
interest,  the  municipal  reservoir,  the  gas  works 
and  the  municipal  abattoir.  In  fact  he  was 
not  there.  But  I  attribute  his  absence  not  to 
any  lack  of  hospitality  but  merely  to  a  certain 
reserve  in  the  English  character.  They  are  as 
yet  unused  to  the  arrival  of  lecturers.  When 
they  get  to  be  more  accustomed  to  their  coming, 
they  will  learn  to  take  them  straight  to  the 
municipal  abattoir  just  as  we  do. 

For  lack  of  better  guidance,  therefore,  I  had 
to  form  my  impressions  of  London  by  myself. 
In  the  mere  physical  sense  there  is  much  to  at- 
tract the  eye.  The  city  is  able  to  boast  of  many 
handsome  public  buildings  and  offices  which 
compare  favourably  with  anything  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic.  On  the  bank  of  the 
Thames  itself  rises  the  power  house  of  the 
Westminster  Electric  Supply  Corporation,  a 
handsome  modern  edifice  in  the  later  Japanese 
style.  Close  by  are  the  commodious  premises 
of  the  Imperial  Tobacco  Company,  while  at  no 
great  distance  the  Chelsea  Gas  Works  add  a 

3* 


Impressions  of  London 


striking  feature  of  rotundity.  Passing  north- 
ward, one  observes  Westminster  Bridge,  nota- 
ble as  a  principal  station  of  the  underground 
railway.  This  station  and  the  one  next  above  it, 
the  Charing  Cross  one,  are  connected  by  a  wide 
thoroughfare  called  Whitehall.  One  of  the 
best  American  drug  stores  is  here  situated.  The 
upper  end  of  Whitehall  opens  into  the  majestic 
and  spacious  Trafalgar  Square.  Here  are 
grouped  in  imposing  proximity  the  offices  of 
the  Canadian  Pacific  and  other  railways,  The 
International  Sleeping  Car  Company,  the  Mon- 
treal Star,  and  the  Anglo-Dutch  Bank.  Two 
of  the  best  American  barber  shops  are  con- 
veniently grouped  near  the  Square,  while  the 
existence  of  a  tall  stone  monument  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  Square  itself  enables  the  American 
visitor  to  find  them  without  difficulty.  Passing 
eastward  towards  the  heart  of  the  city,  one 
notes  on  the  left  hand  the  imposing  pile  of  St. 
Paul's,  an  enormous  church  with  a  round  dome 
on  the  top,  suggesting  strongly  the  first  Church 
of  Christ  (Scientist)  on  Euclid  Avenue,  Cleve- 

33 


My  Discovery  of  England 


land.  But  the  English  churches  not  being 
labelled,  the  visitor  is  often  at  a  loss  to  distin- 
guish them. 

A  little  further  on  one  finds  oneself  in  the 
heart  of  financial  London.  Here  all  the  great 
financial  institutions  of  America — The  First 
National  Bank  of  Milwaukee,  The  Planters 
National  Bank  of  St.  Louis,  The  Montana 
Farmers  Trust  Co.,  and  many  others, — have 
either  their  offices  or  their  agents.  The  Bank 
of  England — which  acts  as  the  London  Agent 
of  The  Montana  Farmers  Trust  Company, — 
and  the  London  County  Bank,  which  represents 
the  People's  Deposit  Co.,  of  Yonkers,  N.  Y., 
are  said  to  be  in  the  neighbourhood. 

This  particular  part  of  London  is  connected 
with  the  existence  of  that  strange  and  myste- 
rious thing  called  "the  City."  I  am  still  unable 
to  decide  whether  the  city  is  a  person,  or  a 
place,  or  a  thing.  But  as  a  form  of  being  I 
give  it  credit  for  being  the  most  emotional, 
the  most  volatile,  the  most  peculiar  creature  in 
the  world.  You  read  in  the  morning  paper 
that  the  City  is  "deeply  depressed."  At  noon 

34 


Impressions  of  London 


it  is  reported  that  the  City  is  "buoyant"  and  by 
four  o'clock  that  the  City  is  "wildly  excited." 

I  have  tried  in  vain  to  find  the  causes  of 
these  peculiar  changes  of  feeling.  The  ostensi- 
ble reasons,  as  given  in  the  newspaper,  are  so 
trivial  as  to  be  hardly  worthy  of  belief.  For 
example,  here  is  the  kind  of  news  that  comes 
out  from  the  City.  "The  news  that  a  modus 
vivendi  has  been  signed  between  the  Sultan  of 
Kowfat  and  the  Shriek-ul-Islam  has  caused  a 
sudden  buoyancy  in  the  City.  Steel  rails  which 
had  been  depressed  all  morning  reacted  imme- 
diately while  American  mules  rose  up  sharply 
to  par."  .  .  .  "Monsieur  Poincare,  speaking 
at  Bordeaux,  said  that  henceforth  France  must 
seek  to  retain  by  all  possible  means  the  ping- 
pong  championship  of  the  world:  values  in  the 
City  collapsed  at  once."  .  -.,  ,,,  "Despatches 
from  Bombay  say  that  the  Shah  of  Persia  yes- 
terday handed  a  golden  slipper  to  the  Grand 
Vizier  Feebli  Pasha  as  a  sign  that  he  might  go 
and  chase  himself:  the  news  was  at  once  fol- 
lowed by  a  drop  in  oil,  and  a  rapid  attempt  to 
liquidate  everything  that  is  fluid.  r. 

35 


My  Discovery  of  England 


But  these  mysteries  of  the  City  I  do  not  pre- 
tend to  explain.  I  have  passed  through  the 
place  dozens  of  times  and  never  noticed  any- 
thing particular  in  the  way  of  depression  or 
buoyancy,  or  falling  oil,  or  rising  rails.  But 
no  doubt  it  is  there. 

A  little  beyond  the  city  and  further  down  the 
river  the  visitor  finds  this  district  of  London 
terminating  in  the  gloomy  and  forbidding 
Tower,  the  principal  penitentiary  of  the  city. 
Here  Queen  Victoria  was  imprisoned  for  many 
years. 

Excellent  gasoline  can  be  had  at  the  Ameri- 
can Garage  immediately  north  of  the  Tower, 
where  motor  repairs  of  all  kinds  are  also  car- 
ried on. 

These,  however,  are  but  the  superficial  pic- 
tures of  London,  gathered  by  the  eye  of  the 
tourist.  A  far  deeper  meaning  is  found  in  the 
examination  of  the  great  historic  monuments 
of  the  city.  The  principal  ones  of  these  are  the 
Tower  of  London  (just  mentioned) ,  the  British 
Museum  and  Westminster  Abbey.  No  visitor 
to  London  should  fail  to  see  these.  Indeed  he 

36 


Impressions  of  London 


ought  to  feel  that  his  visit  to  England  is  wasted 
unless  he  has  seen  them.  I  speak  strongly  on 
the  point  because  I  feel  strongly  on  it.  To  my 
mind  there  is  something  about  the  grim  fascina- 
tion of  the  historic  Tower,  the  cloistered  quiet 
of  the  Museum  and  the  majesty  of  the  ancient 
Abbey,  which  will  make  it  the  regret  of  my  life 
that  I  didn't  see  any  one  of  the  three.  I  fully 
meant  to:  but  I  failed:  and  I  can  only  hope 
that  the  circumstances  of  my  failure  may  be 
helpful  to  other  visitors. 

The  Tower  of  London  I  most  certainly  in- 
tended to  inspect.  Each  day,  after  the  fashion 
of  every  tourist,  I  wrote  for  myself  a  little  list 
of  things  to  do  and  I  always  put  the  Tower  of 
London  on  it.  No  doubt  the  reader  knows  the 
kind  of  little  list  that  I  mean.  It  runs : 

1.  Go  to  bank. 

2.  Buy  a  shirt. 

3.  National  Picture  Gallery. 

4.  Razor  blades. 

5.  Tower  of  London. 

6.  Soap. 

This  itinerary,  I  regret  to  say,  was  never  car- 

37 


My  Discovery  of  England 


ricd  out  in  full.  I  was  able  at  times  both  to  go 
to  the  bank  and  buy  a  shirt  in  a  single  morning: 
at  other  times  I  was  able  to  buy  razor  blades 
and  almost  to  find  the  National  Picture  Gal- 
lery. Meantime  I  was  urged  on  all  sides  by 
my  London  acquaintances  not  to  fail  to  see  the 
Tower.  "There's  a  grim  fascination  about  the 
place,"  they  said;  "you  mustn't  miss  it."  I  am 
quite  certain  that  in  due  course  of  time  I  should 
have  made  my  way  to  the  Tower  but  for  the 
fact  that  I  made  a  fatal  discovery.  I  found 
out  that  the  London  people  who  urged  me  to 
go  and  see  the  Tower  had  never  seen  it  them- 
selves. It  appears  they  never  go  near  it.  One 
night  at  a  dinner  a  man  next  to  me  said,  "Have 
you  seen  the  Tower?  You  really  ought  to. 
There's  a  grim  fascination  about  it."  I  looked 
him  in  the  face.  "Have  you  seen  it  yourself?" 
I  asked.  "Oh,  yes,"  he  answered.  "I've  seen 
it."  "When?"  I  asked.  The  man  hesitated. 
"When  I  was  just  a  boy,"  he  said,  "my  father 
took  me  there."  "How  long  ago  is  that?"  I 
enquired  "About  forty  years  ago,"  he  an- 

38 


Impressions  of  London 


swered;  "I  always  mean  to  go  again  but  I  don't 
somehow  seem  to  get  the  time." 

After  this  I  got  to  understand  that  when  a 
Londoner  says,  "Have  you  seen  the  Tower  of 
London?"  the  answer  is,  "No,  and  neither  have 
you." 

Take  the  parallel  case  of  the  British  Mu- 
seum. Here  is  a  place  that  is  a  veritable 
treasure  house.  A  repository  of  some  of  the 
most  priceless  historical  relics  to  be  found  upon 
the  earth.  It  contains,  for  instance,  the  famous 
Papyrus  Manuscript  of  Thotmes  II  of  the  first 
Egyptian  dynasty — a  thing  known  to  scholars 
all  over  the  world  as  the  oldest  extant  specimen 
of  what  can  be  called  writing;  indeed  one  can 
here  see  the  actual  evolution  (I  am  quoting 
from  a  work  of  reference,  or  at  least  from  my 
recollection  of  it)  from  the  ideographic  cunei- 
form to  the  phonetic  syllabic  script.  Every 
time  I  have  read  about  that  manuscript  and 
have  happened  to  be  in  Orillia  (Ontario)  or 
Schenectady  (N.  Y.)  or  any  such  place,  I  have 
felt  that  I  would  be  willing  to  take  a  whole  trip 

39 


My  Discovery  of  England 


to  England  to  have  five  minutes  at  the  British 
Museum,  just  five,  to  look  at  that  papyrus. 
Yet  as  soon  as  I  got  to  London  this  changed. 
The  railway  stations  of  London  have  been  so 
arranged  that  to  get  to  any  train  for  the  north 
or  west,  the  traveller  must  pass  the  British 
Museum.  The  first  time  I  went  by  it  in  a  taxi, 
I  felt  quite  a  thrill.  "Inside  those  walls,"  I 
thought  to  myself,  "is  the  manuscript  of  Thot- 
mes  II."  The  next  time  I  actually  stopped  the 
taxi.  "Is  that  the  British  Museum?"  I  asked 
the  driver.  "I  think  it  is  something  of  the  sort, 
sir,"  he  said.  I  hesitated.  "Drive  me,"  I  said, 
"to  where  I  can  buy  safety  razor  blades." 

After  that  I  was  able  to  drive  past  the  Mu- 
seum with  the  quiet  assurance  of  a  Londoner, 
and  to  take  part  in  dinner  table  discussions  as 
to  whether  the  British  Museum  or  the  Louvre 
contains  the  greater  treasures.  It  is  quite  easy 
any  way.  All  you  have  to  do  is  to  remember 
that  The  Winged  Victory  of  Samothrace  is  in 
the  Louvre  and  the  papyrus  of  Thotmes  II  (or 
some  such  document)  is  in  the  Museum. 

The  Abbey,  I  admit,  is  indeed  majestic,  I 
40 


Impressions  of  London 


did  not  intend  to  miss  going  into  it.  But  I  felt, 
as  so  many  tourists  have,  that  I  wanted  to  enter 
it  in  the  proper  frame  of  mind.  I  never  got 
into  the  frame  of  mind;  at  least  not  when  near 
the  Abbey  itself.  I  have  been  in  exactly  that 
frame  of  mind  when  on  State  Street,  Chicago, 
or  on  King  Street,  Toronto,  or  anywhere  three 
thousand  miles  away  from  the  Abbey.  But  by 
bad  luck  I  never  struck  both  the  frame  of  mind 
and  the  Abbey  at  the  same  time. 

But  the  Londoners,  after  all,  in  not  seeing 
their  own  wonders,  are  only  like  the  rest  of  the 
world.  The  people  who  live  in  Buffalo  never 
go  to  see  Niagara  Falls;  people  in  Cleve- 
land don't  know  which  is  Mr.  Rockefeller's 
house,  and  people  live  and  even  die  in  New 
York  without  going  up  to  the  top  of  the  Wool- 
worth  Building.  And  anyway  the  past  is  re- 
mote and  the  present  is  near.  I  know  a  cab 
driver  in  the  city  of  Quebec  whose  business  in 
life  it  is  to  drive  people  up  to  see  the  Plains  of 
Abraham,  but  unless  they  bother  him  to  do  it, 
he  doesn't  show  them  the  spot  where  Wolfe 
fell:  what  he  does  point  out  with  real  zest  is 
41 


My  Discovery  of  England 


the  place  where  the  Mayor  and  the  City  Council 
sat  on  the  wooden  platform  that  they  put  up 
for  the  municipal  celebration  last  summer. 

No  description  of  London  would  be  com- 
plete without  a  reference,  however  brief,  to  the 
singular  salubrity  and  charm  of  the  London 
climate.  This  is  seen  at  its  best  during  the 
autumn  and  winter  months.  The  climate  of 
London  and  indeed  of  England  generally  is  due 
to  the  influence  of  the  Gulf  Stream.  The  way 
it  works  is  thus :  The  Gulf  Stream,  as  it  nears 
the  shores  of  the  British  Isles  and  feels  the  pro- 
pinquity of  Ireland,  rises  into  the  air,  turns  into 
soup,  and  comes  down  on  London.  At  times 
the  soup  is  thin  and  is  in  fact  little  more  than  a 
mist :  at  other  times  it  has  the  consistency  of  a 
thick  Potage  St.  Germain.  London  people  are  a 
little  sensitive  on  the  point  and  flatter  their  at- 
mosphere by  calling  it  a  fog:  but  it  is  not:  it 
is  soup.  The  notion  that  no  sunlight  ever  gets 
through  and  that  in  the  London  winter  people 
never  see  the  sun  is  of  course  a  ridiculous  error, 
circulated  no  doubt  by  the  jealousy  of  foreign 
nations.  I  have  myself  seen  the  sun  plainly 

42 


Impressions  of  London 


visible  in  London,  without  the  aid  of  glasses, 
on  a  November  day  in  broad  daylight;  and 
again  one  night  about  four  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon I  saw  the  sun  distinctly  appear  through 
the,  clouds.  The  whole  subject  of  daylight  in 
the  London  winter  is,  however,  one  which  be- 
longs rather  to  the  technique  of  astronomy 
than  to  a  book  of  description.  In  practice  day- 
light is  but  little  used.  Electric  lights  are 
burned  all  the  time  in  all  houses,  buildings,  rail- 
way stations  and  clubs.  This  practice  which  is 
now  universally  observed  is  called  Daylight 
Saving. 

But  the  distinction  between  day  and  night 
'during  the  London  winter  Is  still  quite  obvious 
to  any  one  of  an  observant  mind.  It  is  indicated 
by  various  signs  such  as  the  striking  of  docks, 
the  tolling  of  bells,  the  closing  of  saloons,  and 
the  raising  of  taxi  rates.  It  is  much  less  easy 
to  distinguish  the  technical  approach  of  night  in 
the  other  cities  of  England  that  lie  outside  the 
confines,  physical  and  intellectual,  of  London 
and  live  in  a  continuous  gloom.  In  such  places 
as  the  great  manufacturing  cities,  Buggingham- 

43 


My  Discovery  of  England 


under-Smoke,    or   Gloomsbury-on-Ooze,   night 
may  be  said  to  be  perpetual. 

I  had  written  the  whole  of  the  above  chapter 
and  looked  on  it  as  finished  when  I  realised  that 
I  had  made  a  terrible  omission.  I  neglected  to 
say  anything  about  the  Mind  of  London.  This 
is  a  thing  that  is  always  put  into  any  book  of 
discovery  and  observation  and  I  can  only  apolo- 
gise for  not  having  discussed  it  sooner.  I  am 
quite  familiar  with  other  people's  chapters  on 
"The  Mind  of  America,"  and  "The  Chinese 
Mind,"  and  so  forth.  Indeed,  so  far  as  I  know 
it  has  turned  out  that  almost  everybody  all  over 
the  world  has  a  mind.  Nobody  nowadays  trav- 
els, even  in  Central  America  or  Thibet,  with- 
out bringing  back  a  chapter  on  "The  Mind  of 
Costa  Rica,"  or  on  the  "Psychology  of  the 
Mongolian."  Even  the  gentler  peoples  such 
as  the  Burmese,  the  Siamese,  the  Hawaiians, 
and  the  Russians,  though  they  have  no  minds 
are  written  up  as  souls. 

It  is  quite  obvious  then  that  there  is  such  a 
44 


Impressions  of  London 


thing  as  the  mind  of  London:  and  it  is  all  the 
more  culpable  in  me  to  have  neglected  it  in  as 
much  as  my  editorial  friend  in  New  York  had 
expressly  mentioned  it  to  me  before  I  sailed. 
"What,"  said  he,  leaning  far  over  his  desk  after 
his  massive  fashion  and  reaching  out  into  the 
air,  "what  is  in  the  minds  of  these  people? 
Are  they,"  he  added,  half  to  himself,  though  I 
hearcf  him,  "are  they  thinking?  And,  if  they 
think,  what  do  they  think?" 

I  did  therefore,  during  my  stay  in  London, 
make  an  accurate  study  of  the  things  that  Lon- 
don seemed  to  be  thinking  about.  As  a  com- 
parative basis  for  this  study  I  brought  with  me 
a  carefully  selected  list  of  the  things  that  New 
York  was  thinking  about  at  the  moment.  These 
I  selected  from  the  current  newspapers  in  the 
proportions  to  the  amount  of  space  allotted  to 
each  topic  and  the  size  of  the  heading  that  an- 
nounced it.  Having  thus  a  working  idea  of 
what  I  may  call  the  mind  of  New  York,  I  was 
able  to  collect  and  set  beside  it  a  list  of  similar 
topics,  taken  from  the  London  Press  to  repre- 

45 


My  Discovery  of  England 


sent  the  mind  of  London.  The  two  placed  side 
by  side  make  an  interesting  piece  of  psychologi- 
cal analysis.  They  read  as  follows : 

THE  MIND  OF  NEW  YORK         THE  MIND  OF  LONDON 
What  is  it  thinking?  What  is  it  thinking? 

1.  Do  chorus  girls  make     i.    Do  chorus  girls  many 

good  wives?  well? 

2.  Is  red  hair  a  sign  of     2.   What  is  red  hair  a 

temperament?  sign  of? 

3.  Can  a  woman  be  in    3.    Can  a  man  be  in  love 

love  with  two  men  ?  with  two  women  ? 

4.  Is  fat  a  sign  of  genius?  4.  Is  genius  a  sign  of  fat? 

Looking  over  these  lists,  I  think  it  is  better 
to  present  them  without  comment;  I  feel  sure 
that  somewhere  or  other  in  them  one  should  de- 
tect the  heart-throbs,  the  pulsations  of  two 
great  peoples.  But  I  don't  get  it.  In  fact  the 
two  lists  look  to  me  terribly  like  "the  mind  of 
Costa  Rica." 

i  The  same  editor  also  advised  me  to  mingle, 
at  his  expense,  in  the  brilliant  intellectual  life 
of  England.  "There,"  he  said,  "is  a  coterie  of 
men,  probably  the  most  brilliant  group  East  of 

46 


Impressions  of  London 


the  Mississippi  (I  think  he  said  the  Missis- 
sippi). "You  will  find  them,"  he  said  to  me, 
"brilliant,  witty,  filled  with  repartee."  He  sug- 
gested that  I  should  send  him  back,  as  far  as 
words  could  express  it,  some  of  this  brilliance. 
I  was  very  glad  to  be  able  to  do  this,  although 
I  fear  that  the  results  were  not  at  all  what  he 
had  anticipated.  Still,  I  held  conversations  with 
these  people  and  I  gave  him,  in  all  truthfulness, 
the  result.  Sir  James  Barrie  said,  "This  is 
really  very  exceptional  weather  for  this  time  of 
year."  Cyril  Maude  said,  "And  so  a  Martini 
cocktail  is  merely  gin  and  vermouth."  Ian  Hay 
said,  "You'll  find  the  underground  ever  so 
handy  once  you  understand  it." 

I  have  a  lot  more  of  these  repartees  that  I 
could  insert  here  if  it  was  necessary,.  But  some- 
how I  feel  that  it  is  not. 


IV 

A  CLEAR  VIEW  OF  THE 

GOVERNMENT  AND 

POLITICS  OF 

ENGLAND 


IV. — A  Clear  View  of  the   Gov- 
ernment and  Politics  of  England 

A  LOYAL  British  subject  like  myself  in 
dealing  with  the  government  of  Eng- 
land should  necessarily  begin  with  a 
discussion  of  the  monarchy.     I  have 
never  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  the  King, — ; 
except  once  on  the  G.T.R.  platform  in  Orillia, 
Ontario,  when  he  was  the  Duke  of  York  and  I 
was  one  of  the  welcoming  delegates  of  the  town 
council,    No  doubt  he  would  recall  it  in  a  min- 
ute. 

But  in  England  the  iting  is  surrounded  by 
formality  and  circumstance.  On  many  morn- 
ings I  waited  round  the  gates  of  Buckingham 
Palace  but  I  found  it  quite  impossible  to  meet 
the  King  in  the  quiet  sociable  way  in  which  one 
met  him  in  Orillia.  The  English,  it  seems,  love 
to  make  the  kingship  a  subject  of  great  pomp 

51 


My  Discovery  of  England 


and  official  etiquette.  In  Canada  it  is  quite  dif- 
ferent. Perhaps  we  understand  kings  and 
princes  better  than  the  English  do.  At  any 
rate  we  treat  them  in  a  far  more  human  heart- 
to-heart  fashion  than  is  the  English  custom,  and 
they  respond  to  it  at  once.  I  remember  when 
King  George — he  was,  as  I  say,  Duke  of 
York  then — came  up  to  Orillia,  Ontario,  how 
we  all  met  him  in  a  delegation  on  the  platform. 
Bob  Curran — Bob  was  Mayor  of  the  town  that 
year — went  up  to  him  and  shook  hands  with 
him  and  invited  him  to  come  right  on  up  to  the 
Orillia  House  where  he  had  a  room  reserved 
for  him.  Charlie  Janes  and  Mel  Tudhope  and 
the  other  boys  who  were  on  the  town  Council 
gathered  round  the  royal  prince  and  shook 
hands  and  told  him  that  he  simply  must  stay 
over.  George  Rapley,  the  bank  manager,  said 
that  if  he  wanted  a  cheque  cashed  or  anything 
of  that  sort  to  come  right  into  the  Royal  Bank 
and  he  would  do  it  for  him.  The  prince  had 
two  aides-de-camp  with  him  and  a  secretary,  but 
Bob  Curran  said  to  bring  them  uptown  too  and 
it  would  be  all  right.  We  had  planned  to  have 

5* 


Clear  View  of  Government 

an  oyster  supper  for  the  Prince  at  Jim  Smith's 
hotel  and  then  take  him  either  to  the  Y.M.C.A. 
Pool  Room  or  else  over  to  the  tea  social  in  the 
basement  of  the  Presbyterian  Church. 

Unluckily  the  prince  couldn't  stay.  It  turned 
out  that  he  had  to  get  right  back  into  his  train 
and  go  on  to  Peterborough,  Ontario,  where 
they  were  to  have  a  brass  band  to  meet  him, 
which  naturally  he  didn't  want  to  miss. 

But  the  point  is  that  it  was  a  real  welcome. 
And  you  could  see  that  the  prince  appreciated 
it.  There  was  a  warmth  and  a  meaning  to  it 
that  the  prince  understood  at  once.  It  was  a 
pity  that  he  couldn't  have  stayed  over  and  had 
time  to  see  the  carriage  factory  and  the  new 
sewerage  plant.  We  all  told  the  prince  that  he 
must  come  back  and  he  said  that  if  he  could  he 
most  certainly  would.  When  the  prince's  train 
pulled  out  of  the  station  and  we  all  went  back 
uptown  together  (it  was  before  prohibition 
came  to  Ontario)  you  could  feel  that  the  insti- 
tution of  royalty  was  quite  solid  in  Orillia  for 
a  generation. 

But  you  don't  get  that  sort  of  thing  in  Eng- 

53 


My  Discovery  of  England 


land.  There's  a  formality  and  coldness  in  all 
their  dealings  with  royalty  that  would  never  go 
down  with  us.  They  like  to  have  the  King 
come  and  open  Parliament  dressed  in  royal 
robes,  and  with  a  clattering  troop  of  soldiers 
riding  in  front  of  him.  As  for  taking  him  over 
to  the  Y-.M.C.A.  to  play  pin  pool,  they  never 
think  of  it.  They  have  seen  so  much  of  the 
mere  outside  of  his  kingship  that  they  don't 
understand  the  heart  of  it  as  we  do  in  Canada. 
But  let  us  turn  to  the  House  of  Commons: 
for  no  description  of  England  would  be  com- 
plete without  at  least  some  mention  of  this  in- 
teresting body.  Indeed  for  the  ordinary  visitor 
to  London  the  greatest  interest  of  all  attaches 
to  the  spacious  and  magnificent  Parliament 
Buildings.  The  House  of  Commons  is  com- 
modiously  situated  beside  the  River  Thames. 
The  principal  features  of  the  House  arc  the 
large  lunch  room  on  the  western  side  and  the 
tea-room  on  the  terrace  on  the  eastern.  A  series 
of  smaller  luncheon  rooms  extend  (apparently) 
all  round  about  the  premises:  while  a  commo- 
dious bar  offers  a  ready  access  to  the  members 

54 


Clear  View  of  Government 

at  all  hours  of  the  day.  While  any  members 
are  in  the  bar  a  light  is  kept  burning  in  the  tall 
Clock  Tower  at  one  corner  of  the  building,  but 
when  the  bar  is  closed  the  light  is  turned  off  by 
whichever  of  the  Scotch  members  leaves  last. 
There  is  a  handsome  legislative  chamber  at- 
tached to  the  premises  from  which — so  the  an- 
tiquarians tell  us — the  House  of  Commons  took 
its  name.  But  it  is  not  usual  now  for  the  mem- 
bers to  sit  in  the  legislative  chamber  as  the  legis- 
lation is  now  all  done  outside,  either  at  the 
home  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  or  at  the  National 
Liberal  Club,  or  at  one  or  other  of  the  news- 
paper offices.  The  House,  however,  is  called 
together  at  very  frequent  intervals  to  give  it 
an  opportunity  of  hearing  the  latest  legislation 
and  allowing  the  members  to  indulge  in  cheers, 
sighs,  groans,  votes  and  other  expressions  of 
vitality.  After  having  cheered  as  much  as  is 
good  for  it,  it  goes  back  again  to  the  lunch 
rooms  and  goes  on  eating  till  needed  again. 

It  is,  however,  an  entire  exaggeration  to  say 
that  the  House  of  Commons  no  longer  has  a 
real  share  in  the  government  of  England.  This 

55 


My  Discovery  of  England 


is  not  so.  Anybody  connected  with  the  govern- 
ment values  the  House  of  Commons  in  a  high 
degree.  One  of  the  leading  newspaper  pro- 
prietors of  London  himself  told  me  that  he  has 
always  felt  that  if  he  had  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  his  side  he  had  a  very  valuable  ally. 
Many  of  the  labour  leaders  are  inclined  to  re- 
gard the  House  of  Commons  as  of  great  utility, 
while  the  leading  women's  organizations,  now 
that  women  are  admitted  as  members,  may  be 
said  to  regard  the  House  as  one  of  themselves. 
Looking  around  to  find  just  where  the  natural 
service  of  the  House  of  Commons  comes  in,  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  it  must  be  in  the  prac- 
tice of  "asking  questions"  in  the  House.  When- 
ever anything  goes  wrong  a  member  rises  and 
asks  a  question.  He  gets  up,  for  example,  with 
a  little  paper  in  his  hand,  and  asks  the  govern- 
ment if  ministers  are  aware  that  the  Khedive 
of  Egypt  was  seen  yesterday  wearing  a  Turkish 
Tarbosh.  Ministers  say  very  humbly  that  they 
hadn't  known  it,  and  a  thrill  runs  through  the 
whole  country.  The  members  can  apparently 
ask  any  questions  they  like.  In  the  repeated 

56 


Clear  View  of  Government 

visits  which  I  made  to  the  gallery  of  the  House 
of  Commons  I  was  unable  to  find  any  particular 
sense  or  meaning  in  the  questions  asked,  though 
no  doubt  they  had  an  intimate  bearing  on  Eng- 
lish politics  not  clear  to  an  outsider  like  myself. 
I  heard  one  member  ask  the  government 
whether  they  were  aware  that  herrings  were 
being  imported  from  Hamburg  to  Harwich. 
The  government  said  no.  Another  member 
rose  and  asked  the  government  whether  they 
considered  Shakespere  or  Moliere  the  greater 
dramatic  artist.  The  government  answered 
that  ministers  were  taking  this  under  their  ear- 
nest consideration  and  that  a  report  would  be 
submitted  to  Parliament.  Another  member 
asked  the  government  if  they  knew  who  won 
the  Queen's  Plate  this  season  at  Toronto. 
They  did, — in  fact  this  member  got  in  wrong, 
as  this  is  the  very  thing  that  the  government  do 
know.  Towards  the  close  of  the  evening  a 
member  rose  and  asked  the  government  if  they 
knew  what  time  it  was.  The  Speaker,  however, 
ruled  this  question  out  of  order  on  the  ground 
that  it  had  been  answered  before. 

57 


My  Discovery  of  England 


The  Parliament  Buildings  are  so  vast  that  it 
is  not  possible  to  state  with  certainty  what  they 
do,  or  do  not,  contain.  But  it  is  generally  said 
that  somewhere  in  the  building  is  the  House  of 
Lords.  When  they  meet  they  are  said  to  come 
together  very  quietly  shortly  before  the  dinner 
hour,  take  a  glass  of  dry  sherry  and  a  biscuit 
(they  are  all  abstemious  men),  reject  whatever 
bills  may  be  before  them  at  the  moment,  take 
another  dry  sherry  and  then  adjourn  for  two 
years. 

The  public  are  no  longer  allowed  unrestricted 
access  to  the  Houses  of  Parliament;  its  ap- 
proaches are  now  strictly  guarded  by  policemen. 
In  order  to  obtain  admission  it  is  necessary 
either  to  (A)  communicate  in  writing  with  the 
Speaker  of  the  House,  enclosing  certificates  of 
naturalization  and  proof  of  identity,  or  (B) 
give  the  policeman  five  shillings.  Method  B  is 
the  one  usually  adopted.  On  great  nights,  how- 
ever, when  the  House  of  Commons  is  sitting 
and  is  about  to  do  something  important,  such  as 
ratifying  a  Home  Rule  Bill  or  cheering,  or  wel- 
coming a  new  lady  member,  it  is  not  possible  to 


Clear  View  of  Government 

enter  by  merely  bribing  the  policeman  with  five 
shillings;  it  takes  a  pound.  The  English  people 
complain  bitterly  of  the  rich  Americans  who 
have  in  this  way  corrupted  the  London  public. 
Before  they  were  corrupted  they  would  do  any- 
thing for  sixpence. 

This  peculiar  vein  of  corruption  by  the 
Americans  runs  like  a  thread,  I  may  say, 
through  all  the  texture  of  English  life.  Among 
those  who  have  been  principally  exposed  to  it 
are  the  servants, — especially  butlers  and  chauf- 
feurs, hotel  porters,  bell-boys,  railway  porters 
and  guards,  all  taxi-drivers,  pew-openers,  cu- 
rates, bishops,  and  a  large  part  of  the  peerage. 

The  terrible  ravages  that  have  been  made  by 
the  Americans  on  English  morality  are  wit- 
nessed on  every  hand.  Whole  classes  of  society 
are  hopelessly  damaged.  I  have  it  in  the  evi- 
dence of  the  English  themselves  and  there 
seems  to  be  no  doubt  of  the  fact.  Till  the 
Americans  came  to  England  the  people  were  an 
honest,  law-abiding  race,  respecting  their  su- 
periors and  despising  those  below  them.  They 
had  never  been  corrupted  by  money  and  their 

59 


My  Discovery  of  England 


employers  extended  to  them  in  this  regard  their 
tenderest  solicitude.  Then  the  Americans  came. 
Servants  ceased  to  be  what  they  were;  butlers 
were  hopelessly  damaged;  hotel  porters  became 
a  wreck;  taxi-drivers  turned  out  thieves;  curates 
could  no  longer  be  trusted  to  handle  money; 
peers  sold  their  daughters  at  a  million  dollars 
a  piece  or  three  for  two.  In  fact  the  whole 
kingdom  began  to  deteriorate  till  it  got  where 
it  is  now.  At  present  after  a  rich  American 
has  stayed  in  any  English  country  house,  its 
owners  find  that  they  can  do  nothing  with  the 
butler;  a  wildness  has  come  over  the  man. 
There  is  a  restlessness  in  his  demeanour  and  a 
strange  wistful  look  in  his  eye  as  if  seeking  for 
something.  In  many  cases,  so  I  understand, 
after  an  American  has  stayed  in  a  country  house 
the  butler  goes  insane.  He  is  found  in  his  pan- 
try counting  over  the  sixpence  given  to  him  by 
a  Duke,  and  laughing  to  himself.  He  has  to 
be  taken  in  charge  by  the  police.  With  him 
generally  go  the  chauffeur,  whose  mind  has 
broken  down  from  driving  a  rich  American 
twenty  miles;  and  the  gardener,  who  is  found 

60 


Clear  View  of  Government 

tearing  up  raspberry  bushes  by  the  roots  to  see 
if  there  is  any  money  under  them;  and  the  local 
curate  whose  brain  has  collapsed  or  expanded, 
I  forget  which,  when  a  rich  American  gave  him 
fifty  dollars  for  his  soup  kitchen. 

There  are,  it  is  true,  a  few  classes  that  have 
escaped  this  contagion,  shepherds  living  in  the 
hills,  drovers,  sailors,  fishermen  and  such  like. 
I  remember  the  first  time  I  went  into  the  Eng- 
lish country-side  being  struck  with  the  clean, 
honest  look  in  the  people's  faces.  I  realised 
exactly  where  they  got  it:  they  had  never  seen 
any  Americans.  I  remember  speaking  to  an 
aged  peasant  down  in  Somerset.  "Have  you 
ever  seen  any  Americans?"  "Nah,"  he  said, 
"uz  eeard  a  mowt  o'  'em,  zir,  but  uz  zeen  nowt 
o'  'em."  It  was  clear  that  the  noble  fellow  was 
quite  undamaged  by  American  contact. 

Now  the  odd  thing  about  this  corruption  is 
that  exactly  the  same  idea  is  held  on  the  other 
side  of  the  water.  It  is  a  known  fact  that  if  a 
young  English  Lord  comes  to  an  American 
town  he  puts  it  to  the  bad  in  one  week.  Socially 
the  whole  place  goes  to  pieces.  Girls  whose 

61 


My  Discovery  of  England 


parents  are  in  the  hardware  business  and  who 
used  to  call  their  father  "pop"  begin  to  talk  of 
precedence  and  whether  a  Duchess  Dowager 
goes  in  to  dinner  ahead  of  or  behind  a  countess 
scavenger.  After  the  young  Lord  has  attended 
two  dances  and  one  tea-social  in  the  Methodist 
Church  Sunday  School  Building  (Adults  25 
cents,  children  10  cents — all  welcome.)  there  is 
nothing  for  the  young  men  of  the  town  to  do 
except  to  drive  him  out  or  go  further  west. 

One  can  hardly  wonder  then  that  this  general 
corruption  has  extended  even  to  the  policemen 
who  guard  the  Houses  of  Parliament.  On  the 
other  hand  this  vein  of  corruption  has  not  ex- 
tended to  English  politics.  Unlike  ours,  Eng- 
lish politics, — one  hears  it  on  every  hand, — are 
pure.  Ours  unfortunately  are  known  to  be  not 
so.  The  difference  seems  to  be  that  our  politi- 
cians will  do  anything  for  money  and  the  Eng- 
lish politicians  won't;  they  just  take  the  money 
and  won't  do  a  thing  for  it. 

Somehow  there  always  seems  to  be  a  peculiar 
interest  about  English  political  questions  that 
we  don't  find  elsewhere.  At  home  in  Canada 

62 


Clear  View  of  Government 

our  politics  turn  on  such  things  as  how  much 
money  the  Canadian  National  Railways  lose  as 
compared  with  how  much  they  could  lose  if  they 
really  tried;  on  whether  the  Grain  Growers  of 
Manitoba  should  be  allowed  to  import  ploughs 
without  paying  a  duty  or  to  pay  a  duty  without 
importing  the  ploughs.  Our  members  at  Ot- 
tawa discuss  such  things  as  highway  subsidies, 
dry  farming,  the  Bank  Act,  and  the  tariff  on 
hardware.  These  things  leave  me  absolutely 
cold.  To  be  quite  candid  there  is  something 
terribly  plebeian  about  them.  In  short,  our  pol- 
itics are  what  we  call  in  French  "peuple." 

But  when  one  turns  to  England,  what  a 
striking  difference !  The  English,  with  the 
whole  huge  British  Empire  to  fish  in  and  the 
European  system  to  draw  upon,  can  always  dig 
up  some  kind  of  political  topic  of  discussion  that 
has  a  real  charm  about  it.  One  month  you  find 
English  politics  turning  on  the  Oasis  of  Merv 
and  the  next  on  the  hinterland  of  Albania;  or  a 
member  rises  in  the  Commons  with  a  little  bit 
of  paper  in  his  hand  and  desires  to  ask  the  for- 
eign secretary  if  he  is  aware  that  the  Ahkoond 

63 


My  Discovery  of  England 


of  Swat  is  dead.  The  foreign  secretary  states 
that  the  government  have  no  information  other 
than  that  the  Ahkoond  was  dead  a  month  ago. 
There  is  a  distinct  sensation  in  the  House  at  the 
realisation  that  the  Ahkoond  has  been  dead  a 
month  without  the  House  having  known  that 
he  was  alive.  The  sensation  is  conveyed  to  the 
Press  and  the  afternoon  papers  appear  with 
large  headings,  THE  AHKOOND  OF  SWAT  Is 
DEAD.  The  public  who  have  never  heard  of  the 
Ahkoond  bare  their  heads  in  a  moment  in  a 
pause  to  pray  for  the  Ahkoond's  soul.  Then 
the  cables  take  up  the  refrain  and  word  is 
flashed  all  over  the  world,  The  Ahkoond  of 
Swat  is  Dead. 

There  was  a  Canadian  journalist  and  poet 
once  who  was  so  impressed  with  the  news  that 
the  Ahkoond  was  dead,  so  bowed  down  with 
regret  that  he  had  never  known  the  Ahkoond 
while  alive,  that  he  forthwith  wrote  a  poem  in 
memory  of  The  Ahkoond  of  Swat.  I  have  al- 
ways thought  that  the  reason  of  the  wide  ad- 
miration that  Lannigan's  verses  received  was 
not  merely  because  of  the  brilliant  wit  that  is  in 

64 


Clear  View  of  Government 

them  but  because  in  a  wider  sense  they  typify 
so  beautifully  the  scope  of  English  politics. 
The  death  of  the  Ahkoond  of  Swat,  and 
whether  Great  Britain  should  support  as  his  suc- 
cessor Mustalpha  El  Djin  or  Kamu  Flaj, — 
there  is  something  worth  talking  of  over  an 
afternoon  tea  table.  But  suppose  that  the 
whole  of  the  Manitoba  Grain  Growers  were  to 
die.  What  could  one  say  about  it?  They'd  be 
dead,  that's  all. 

So  it  is  that  people  all  over  the  world  turn 
to  English  politics  with  interest.  What  more 
delightful  than  to  open  an  atlas,  find  out  where 
the  new  kingdom  of  Hejaz  is,  and  then  vio- 
lently support  the  British  claim  to  a  protector- 
ate over  it.  Over  in  America  we  don't  under- 
stand this  sort  of  thing.  There  is  naturally 
little  chance  to  do  so  and  we  don't  know  how  to 
use  it  when  it  comes.  I  remember  that  when  a 
chance  did  come  in  connection  with  the  great 
Venezuela  dispute  over  the  ownership  of  the 
jungles  and  mud-flats  of  British  Guiana,  the 
American  papers  at  once  inserted  headings, 
WHERE  Is  THE  ESSIQUIBO  RIVER?  That 


My  Discovery  of  England 


spoiled  the  whole  thing.  If  you  admit  that  you 
don't  know  where  a  place  is,  then  the  bottom  is 
knocked  out  of  all  discussion.  But  if  you  pre- 
tend that  you  do,  then  you  are  all  right.  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  is  said  to  have  caused  great 
amusement  at  the  Versailles  Conference  by  ad- 
mitting that  he  hadn't  known  where  Teschen 
was.  So  at  least  it  was  reported  in  the  papers; 
and  for  all  I  know  it  might  even  have  been  true. 
But  the  fun  that  he  raised  was  not  really  half 
what  could  have  been  raised.  I  have  it  on  good 
authority  that  two  of  the  American  delegates 
.hadn't  known  where  Austria  Proper  was  and 
thought  that  Unredeemed  Italy  was  on  the  East 
side  of  New  York,  while  the  Chinese  Delegate 
thought  that  the  Cameroons  were  part  of  Scot- 
land. But  it  is  these  little  geographic  niceties 
that  lend  a  charm  to  European  politics  that  ours 
lack  forever. 

I  don't  mean  to  say  the  English  politics  al- 
ways turn  on  romantic  places  or  on  small  ques- 
tions. They  don't.  They  often  include  ques- 
tions of  the  largest  order.  But  when  the  Eng- 
lish introduce  a  really  large  question  as  the  basis 

66 


Clear  View  of  Government 

of  their  politics  they  like  to  select  one  that  is 
insoluble.  This  guarantees  that  it  will  last. 
Take  for  example  the  rights  of  the  Crown  as 
against  the  people.  That  lasted  for  one  hun- 
dred years, — all  the  seventeenth  century.  In 
Oklahoma  or  in  Alberta  they  would  have  called 
a  convention  on  the  question,  settled  it  in  two 
weeks  and  spoiled  it  for  further  use.  In  the 
same  way  the  Protestant  Reformation  was  used 
for  a  hundred  years  and  the  Reform  Bill  for  a 
generation. 

At  the  present  time  the  genius  of  the  English 
for  politics  has  selected  as  their  insoluble  politi- 
cal question  the  topic  of  the  German  indemnity. 
The  essence  of  the  problem  as  I  understand  it 
may  be  stated  as  follows : 

It  was  definitely  settled  by  the  Conference  at 
Versailles  that  Germany  is  to  pay  the  Allies 
3,912,486,782,421  marks.  I  think  that  is  the 
correct  figure,  though  of  course  I  am  speaking 
only  from  memory.  At  any  rate,  the  correct 
figure  is  within  a  hundred  billion  marks  of  the 
above. 

The  sum  to  be  paid  was  not  reached  without 


My  Discovery  of  England 


a  great  deal  of  discussion.  Monsieur  Briand, 
the  French  Minister,  is  reported  to  have  thrown 
out  the  figure  4,281,390,687,471.  But  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  would  not  pick  it  up.  Nor  do  I 
blame  him  unless  he  had  a  basket  to  pick  it  up 
with. 

Lloyd  George's  point  of  view  was  that  the 
Germans  could  very  properly  pay  a  limited 
amount  such  as  3,912,486,782,421  marks,  but 
it  was  not  feasible  to  put  on  them  a  burden  of 
4,281,390,687,471  marks. 

By  the  way,  if  any  one  at  this  point  doubts 
the  accuracy  of  the  figures  just  given,  all  he  has 
to  do  is  to  take  the  amount  of  the  indemnity  as 
stated  in  gold  marks  and  then  multiply  it  by 
the  present  value  of  the  mark  and  he  will  find 
to  his  chagrin  that  the  figures  are  correct.  If 
he  is  still  not  satisfied  I  refer  him  to  a  book  of 
Logarithms.  If  he  is  not  satisfied  with  that  I 
refer  him  to  any  work  on  conic  sections  and  if 
not  convinced  even  then  I  refer  him  so  far  that 
he  will  never  come  back. 

The  indemnity  being  thus  fixed,  the  next  ques- 
tion is  as  to  the  method  of  collecting  it.  In  the 

68 


Clear  Fiew  of  Government 

first  place  there  is  no  intention  of  allowing  the 
Germans  to  pay  in  actual  cash.  If  they  do  this 
they  will  merely  inflate  the  English  beyond  what 
is  bearable.  England  has  been  inflated  now  for 
eight  years  and  has  had  enough  of  it. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  understood  that  it 
will  not  do  to  allow  the  Germans  to  offer  4,28 1, - 
390,687,471  marks'  worth  of  coal.  It  is  more 
than  the  country  needs. 

What  is  more,  if  the  English  want  coal  they 
propose  to  buy  it  in  an  ordinary  decent  way 
from  a  Christian  coal-dealer  in  their  own  coun- 
try. They  do  not  purpose  to  ruin  their  own 
coal  industry  for  the  sake  of  building  up  the 
prosperity  of  the  German  nation. 

What  I  say  of  coal  is  applied  with  equal  force 
to  any  offers  of  food,  grain,  oil,  petroleum,  gas, 
or  any  other  natural  product.  Payment  in  any 
of  these  will  be  sternly  refused.  Even  now  it  is 
all  the  British  farmers  can  do  to  live  and  for 
some  it  is  more.  Many  of  them  are  having  to 
sell  off  their  motors  and  pianos  and  to  send 
their  sons  to  college  to  work.  At  the  same 
time,  the  German  producer  by  depressing  the 

69 


My  Discovery  of  England 


mark  further  and  further  is  able  to  work  four- 
teen hours  a  day.  This  argument  may  not  be 
quite  correct  but  I  take  it  as  I  find  it  in  the 
London  Press.  Whether  I  state  it  correctly  or 
not,  it  is  quite  plain  that  the  problem  is  insolu- 
ble. That  is  all  that  is  needed  in  first  class 
politics. 

A  really  good  question  like  the  German  rep- 
aration question  will  go  on  for  a  century.  Un- 
doubtedly in  the  year  2000  A.D.,a  British  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer  will  still  be  explaining 
that  the  government  is  fully  resolved  that  Ger- 
many shall  pay  to  the  last  farthing  (cheers)  : 
but  that  ministers  have  no  intention  of  allowing 
the  German  payment  to  take  a  form  that  will 
undermine  British  industry  (wild  applause)  : 
that  the  German  indemnity  shall  be  so  paid  that 
without  weakening  the  power  of  the  Germans 
to  buy  from  us  it  shall  increase  our  power  of 
selling  to  them. 

Such  questions  last  forever. 

On  the  other  hand  sometimes  by  sheer  care- 
lessness a  question  gets  settled  and  passes  out 
of  politics.  This,  so  we  are  given  to  undcr- 

70 


Clear  View  of  Government 

stand,  has  happened  to  the  Irish  question.  It 
is  settled.  A  group  of  Irish  delegates  and 
British  ministers  got  together  round  a  table  and 
settled  it.  The  settlement  has  since  been  cele- 
brated at  a  demonstration  of  brotherhood  by 
the  Irish  Americans  of  New  York  with  only  six 
casualties.  Henceforth  the  Irish  question 
passes  into  history.  There  may  be  some  odd 
fighting  along  the  Ulster  border,  or  a  little  civil 
war  with  perhaps  a  little  revolution  every  now 
and  then,  but  as  a  question  the  thing  is  finished. 

I  must  say  that  I  for  one  am  very  sorry  to 
think  that  the  Irish  question  is  gone.  We  shall 
miss  it  greatly.  Debating  societies  which  have 
flourished  on  it  ever  since  1886  will  be  wrecked 
for  want  of  it.  Dinner  parties  will  now  lose 
half  the  sparkle  of  their  conversation.  It  will 
be  no  longer  possible  to  make  use  of  such  good 
old  remarks  as,  "After  all  the  Irish  are  a  gifted 
people,"  or,  "You  must  remember  that  fifty  per 
cent  of  the  great  English  generals  were  Irish." 

The  settlement  turned  out  to  be  a  very  simple 
affair.  Ireland  was  merely  given  dominion 
status.  What  that  is,  no  one  knows,  but  it 
71 


My  Discovery  of  England 


means  that  the  Irish  have  now  got  it  and  that 
they  sink  from  the  high  place  that  they  had  in 
the  white  light  of  publicity  to  the  level  of  the 
Canadians  or  the  New  Zealanders. 

Whether  it  is  quite  a  proper  thing  to  settle 
trouble  by  conferring  dominion  status  on  it,  is 
open  to  question.  It  is  a  practice  that  is  bound 
to  spread.  It  is  rumoured  that  it  is  now  con- 
templated to  confer  dominion  status  upon  the 
Borough  of  Poplar  and  on  the  Cambridge 
undergraduates.  It  is  even  understood  that  at 
the  recent  disarmament  conference  England  of- 
fered to  confer  dominion  status  on  the  United 
States.  President  Harding  would  assuredly 
have  accepted  it  at  once  but  for  the  protest  of 
Mr.  Briand,  who  claimed  that  any  such  offer 
must  be  accompanied  by  a  permission  to  in- 
crease the  French  fire-brigade  by  fifty  per  cent. 

It  is  lamentable,  too,  that  at  the  very  same 
moment  when  the  Irish  question  was  extin- 
guished, the  Naval  Question  which  had  lasted 
for  nearly  fifty  years  was  absolutely  obliterated 
by  disarmament.  Henceforth  the  alarm  of  in- 
vasion is  a  thing  of  the  past  and  the  navy  prac- 

72 


Clear  View  of  Government 

tically  needless.  Beyond  keeping  a  fleet  in  the 
North  Sea  and  one  on  the  Mediterranean,  and 
maintaining  a  patrol  all  round  the  rim  of  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  Britain  will  cease  to  be  a  naval 
power.  A  mere  annual  expenditure  of  fifty  mil- 
lion pounds  sterling  will  suffice  for  such  thin 
pretence  of  naval  preparedness  as  a  disarmed 
nation  will  have  to  maintain. 

This  thing  too,  came  as  a  surprise,  or  at  least 
a  surprise  to  the  general  public  who  are  una- 
ware of  the  workings  of  diplomacy.  Those  who 
know  about  such  things  were  fully  aware  of 
what  would  happen  if  a  whole  lot  of  British 
sailors  and  diplomatists  and  journalists  were 
exposed  to  the  hospitalities  of  Washington. 
The  British  and  Americans  are  both  alike.  You 
can't  drive  them  or  lead  them  or  coerce  them, 
but  if  you  give  them  a  cigar  they'll  do  anything. 

The  inner  history  of  the  conference  is  only 
just  beginning  to  be  known.  But  it  is  whispered 
that  immediately  on  his  arrival  Mr.  Balfour 
was  given  a  cigar  by  President  Harding.  Mr. 
Balfour  at  once  offered  to  scrap  five  ships,  and 
invited  the  entire  American  cabinet  into  the 

73 


My  Discovery  of  England 


British  Embassy,  where  Sir  A.  Geddes  was  rash 
enough  to  offer  them  champagne. 

The  American  delegates  immediately  offered 
to  scrap  ten  ships.  Mr.  Balfour,  who  simply 
cannot  be  outdone  in  international  courtesy,  saw 
the  ten  and  raised  it  to  twenty.  President 
Harding  saw  the  twenty,  raised  it  to  thirty,  and 
sent  out  for  more  poker  chips. 

At  the  close  of  the  play  Lord  Beatty,  who  is 
urbanity  itself,  offered  to  scrap  Portsmouth 
Dockyard,  and  asked  if  anybody  present  would 
like  Canada.  President  Harding  replied  with 
his  customary  tact  that  if  England  wanted  the 
Philippines,  he  would  think  it  what  he  would 
term  a  residuum  of  normalcy  to  give  them 
away.  There  is  no  telling  what  might  have 
happened  had  not  Mr.  Briand  interposed  to  say 
that  any  transfer  of  the  Philippines  must  be 
regarded  as  a  signal  for  a  twenty  per  cent  in- 
crease in  the  Boy  Scouts  of  France.  As  a  tact- 
ful conclusion  to  the  matter  President  Harding 
raised  Mr.  Balfour  to  the  peerage. 

As  things  are,  disarmament  coming  along 
with  the  Irish  settlement,  leaves  English  politics 

74 


Clear  View  of  Government 

in  a  bad  way.  The  general  outlook  is  too  peace- 
ful altogether.  One  looks  round  almost  in  vain 
for  any  of  those  "strained  relations"  which  used 
to  be  the  very  basis  of  English  foreign  policy. 
In  only  one  direction  do  I  see  light  for  English 
politics,  and  that  is  over  towards  Czecho-Slo- 
vakia.  It  appears  that  Czecho-Slovakia  owes 
the  British  Exchequer  fifty  million  sterling.  I 
cannot  quote  the  exact  figure,  but  it  is  either 
fifty  million  or  fifty  billion.  In  either  case 
Czecho-Slovakia  is  unable  to  pay.  The  an- 
nouncement has  just  been  made  by  M.  Sgitzch, 
the  new  treasurer,  that  the  country  is  bankrupt 
or  at  least  that  he  sees  his  way  to  make  it  so  in 
a  week. 

It  has  been  at  once  reported  in  City  circles 
that  there  are  "strained  relations"  between 
Great  Britain  and  Czecho-Slovakia.  Now  what 
I  advise  is,  that  if  the  relations  are  strained, 
keep  them  so.  England  has  lost  nearly  all  the 
strained  relations  she  ever  had;  let  her  cherish 
the  few  that  she  still  has.  I  know  that  there 
are  other  opinions.  The  suggestion  has  been  at 
once  made  for  a  "round  table  conference,"  at 

75 


My  Discovery  of  England 


which  the  whole  thing  can  be  freely  discussed 
without  formal  protocols  and  something  like  a 
"gentleman's  agreement"  reached.  I  say,  don't 
do  it.  England  is  being  ruined  by  these  round 
table  conferences.  They  arc  sitting  round  in 
Cairo  and  Calcutta  and  Capetown,  filling  all 
the  best  hotels  and  eating  out  the  substance  of 
the  taxpayer. 

I  am  told  that  Lloyd  George  has  offered  to 
go  to  Czecho-Slovakia.  He  should  be  stopped. 
It  is  said  that  Professor  Keyncs  has  proved  that 
the  best  way  to  deal  with  the  debt  of  Czecho- 
slovakia is  to  send  them  whatever  cash  we  have 
left,  thereby  turning  the  exchange  upside  down 
on  them,  and  forcing  them  to  buy  all  their 
Christmas  presents  in  Manchester. 

It  is  wiser  not  to  do  anything  of  the  sort. 
England  should  send  them  a  good  old-fashioned 
ultimatum,  mobilise  all  the  naval  officers  at  the 
Embankment  hotels,  raise  the  income  tax  an- 
other sixpence,  and  defy  them. 

If  that  were  done  it  might  prove  a  successful 
first  step  in  bringing  English  politics  back  to 
the  high  plane  of  conversational  interest  from 
which  they  are  threatening  to  fall. 


V 
OXFORD  AS  I  SEE  IT 


V. — Oxford  as  I  See  It 


MY  private  station  being  that  of  a  uni- 
versity professor,  I  was  naturally 
deeply  interested  in  the  system  of  edu- 
cation in  England.  I  was  therefore 
led  to  make  a  special  visit  to  Oxford  and  to 
submit  the  place  to  a  searching  scrutiny.  Ar- 
riving one  afternoon  at  four  o'clock,  I  stayed 
at  the  Mitre  Hotel  and  did  not  leave  until 
eleven  o'clock  next  morning.  The  whole  of 
this  time,  except  for  one  hour  spent  in  address- 
ing the  undergraduates,  was  devoted  to  a  close 
and  eager  study  of  the  great  university.  When 
I  add  to  this  that  I  had  already  visited  Oxford 
in  1907  and  spent  a  Sunday  at  All  Souls  with 
Colonel  L.  S.  Amery,  it  will  be  seen  at  once 
that  my  views  on  Oxford  are  based  upon  ob- 
servations extending  over  fourteen  years. 

At  any  rate  I  can  at  least  claim  that  my  ac- 
79 


My  Discovery  of  England 


quaintance  with  the  British  university  is  just 
as  good  a  basis  for  reflection  and  judgment  as 
that  of  the  numerous  English  critics  who  come 
to  our  side  of  the  water.  I  have  known  a  fa- 
mous English  author  to  arrive  at  Harvard  Uni- 
versity in  the  morning,  have  lunch  with  Presi- 
dent Lowell,  and  then  write  a  whole  chapter  on 
the  Excellence  of  Higher  Education  in  America. 
I  have  known  another  cine  come  to  Harvard, 
have  lunch  with  President  Lowell,  and  do  an 
entire  book  on  the  Decline  of  Serious  Study  in 
America.  Or  take  the  case  of  my  own  univers- 
ity. I  remember  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  coming 
to  McGill  and  saying  in  his  address  to  the 
undergraduates  at  2.30  P.M.,  "You  have  here  a 
great  institution."  But  how  could  he  have  gath- 
ered this  information?  As  far  as  I  know  he 
spent  the  entire  morning  with  Sir  Andrew  Mac- 
phail  in  his  house  beside  the  campus,  smoking 
cigarettes.  When  I  add  that  he  distinctly  re- 
fused to  visit  the  Palaeontologic  Museum,  that 
he  saw  nothing  of  our  new  hydraulic  apparatus, 
or  of  our  classes  in  Domestic  Science,  his  judg- 
ment that  we  had  here  a  great  institution  seems 

80 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


a  little  bit  superficial.  I  can  only  put  beside  it, 
to  redeem  it  in  some  measure,  the  hasty  and  ill- 
formed  judgment  expressed  by  Lord  Milner, 
"McGill  is  a  noble  university" :  and  the  rash 
and  indiscreet  expression  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  when  we  gave  him  an  LL.D.  degree, 
"McGill  has  a  glorious  future." 

To  my  mind  these  unthinking  judgments 
about  our  great  college  do  harm,  and  I  deter- 
mined, therefore,  that  anything  that  I  said  about 
Oxford  should  be  the  result  of  the  actual  ob- 
servation and  real  study  based  upon  a  bona  fide 
residence  in  the  Mitre  Hotel. 

On  the  strength  of  this  basis  of  experience  I 
am  prepared  to  make  the  following  positive  and 
emphatic  statements.  Oxford  is  a  noble  uni- 
versity. It  has  a  great  past.  It  is  at  present 
the  greatest  university  in  the  world:  and  it  is 
quite  possible  that  it  has  a  great  future.  Ox- 
ford trains  scholars  of  the  real  type  better  than 
any  other  place  in  the  world.  Its  methods  are 
antiquated.  It  despises  science.  Its  lectures 
are  rotten.  It  has  professors  who  never  teach 
and  students  who  never  learn.  It  has  no  order, 

81 


My  Discovery  of  England 


no  arrangement,  no  system.  Its  curriculum  is 
unintelligible.  It  has  no  president.  It  has  no 
state  legislature  to  tell  it  how  to  teach,  and  yet, 
— it  gets  there.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  Ox- 
ford gives  something  to  its  students,  a  life  and 
a  mode  of  thought,  which  in  America  as  yet  we 
can  emulate  but  not  equal. 

If  anybody  doubts  this  let  him  go  and  take  a 
room  at  the  Mitre  Hotel  (ten  and  six  for  a 
wainscotted  bedroom,  period  of  Charles  I)  and 
study  the  place  for  himself. 

These  singular  results  achieved  at  Oxford 
are  all  the  more  surprising  when  one  considers 
the  distressing  conditions  under  which  the 
students  work.  The  lack  of  an  adequate  build- 
ing fund  compels  them  to  go  on  working  in  the 
same  old  buildings  which  they  have  had  for 
centuries.  The  buildings  at  Brasenose  College 
have  not  been  renewed  since  the  year  1525.  In 
New  College  and  Magdalen  the  students  are 
still  housed  in  the  old  buildings  erected  in 
the  sixteenth  century.  At  Christ  Church  I 
was  shown  a  kitchen  which  had  been  built  at 
the  expense  of  Cardinal  Wolscy  in  1527.  In- 

82 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


credible  though  it  may  seem,  they  have  no  other 
place  to  cook  in  than  this  and  are  compelled  to 
use  it  to-day.  On  the  day  when  I  saw  this 
kitchen,  four  cooks  were  busy  roasting  an  ox 
whole  for  the  students'  lunch:  this  at  least  is 
what  I  presumed  they  were  doing  from  the  size 
of  the  fire-place  used,  but  it  may  not  have  been 
an  ox;  perhaps  it  was  a  cow.  On  a  huge  table, 
twelve  feet  by  six  and  made  of  slabs  of  wood 
five  inches  thick,  two  other  cooks  were  rolling 
out  a  game  pie.  I  estimated  it  as  measuring 
three  feet  across.  In  this  rude  way,  unchanged 
since  the  time  of  Henry  VIII,  the  unhappy  Ox- 
ford students  are  fed.  I  could  not  help  con- 
trasting it  with  the  cosy  little  boarding  houses 
on  Cottage  Grove  Avenue  where  I  used  to  eat 
when  I  was  a  student  at  Chicago,  or  the  charm- 
ing little  basement  dining-rooms  of  the  stu- 
dents' boarding  houses  in  Toronto.  But  then, 
of  course,  Henry  VIII  never  lived  in  Toronto. 
The  same  lack  of  a  building-fund  necessitates 
the  Oxford  students,  living  in  the  identical  old 
boarding  houses  they  had  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries.  Technically  they  are 

83 


My  Discovery  of  England 


called  "quadrangles,"  "closes"  and  "rooms"; 
but  I  am  so  broken  in  to  the  usage  of  my 
student  days  that  I  can't  help  calling  them 
boarding  houses.  In  many  of  these  the  old 
stairway  has  been  worn  down  by  the  feet  of  ten 
generations  of  students:  the  windows  have  lit- 
tle latticed  panes:  there  are  old  names  carved 
here  and  there  upon  the  stone,  and  a  thick 
growth  of  ivy  covers  the  walls.  The  boarding 
house  at  St.  John's  College  dates  from  1509, 
the  one  at  Christ  Church  from  the  same  period. 
A  few  hundred  thousand  pounds  would  suffice 
to  replace  these  old  buildings  with  neat  steel 
and  brick  structures  like  the  normal  school  at 
Schenectady,  N.  Y.,  or  the  Peel  Street  High 
School  at  Montreal.  But  nothing  is  done.  A 
movement  was  indeed  attempted  last  autumn 
towards  removing  the  ivy  from  the  walls,  but 
the  result  was  unsatisfactory  and  they  are  put- 
ting it  back.  Any  one  could  have  told  them  be- 
forehand that  the  mere  removal  of  the  ivy 
would  not  brighten  Oxford  up,  unless  at  the 
same  time  one  cleared  the  stones  of  the  old  in- 

84 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


scriptions,  put  in  steel  fire-escapes,  and  in  fact 
brought  the  boarding  houses  up  to  date. 

But  Henry  VIII  being  dead,  nothing  was 
done.  Yet  in  spite  of  its  dilapidated  build- 
ings and  its  lack  of  fire-escapes,  ventilation, 
sanitation,  and  up-to-date  kitchen  facilities,  I 
persist  in  my  assertion  that  I  believe  that  Ox- 
ford, in  its  way,  is  the  greatest  university  in  the 
world.  I  am  aware  that  this  is  an  extreme  state- 
ment and  needs  explanation.  Oxford  is  much 
smaller  in  numbers,  for  example,  than  the  State 
University  of  Minnesota,  and  is  much  poorer. 
It  has,  or  had  till  yesterday,  fewer  students  than 
the  University  of  Toronto.  To  mention  Oxford 
beside  the  26,000  students  of  Columbia  Uni- 
versity sounds  ridiculous.  In  point  of  money, 
the  39,000,000  dollar  endowment  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago,  and  the  $35,000,000  one 
of  Columbia,  and  the  $43,000,000  of  Harvard 
seem  to  leave  Oxford  nowhere.  Yet  the  pecu- 
liar thing  is  that  it  is  not  nowhere.  By 
some  queer  process  of  its  own  it  seems  to  get 
there  every  time.  It  was  therefore  of  the  very 

85 


My  Discovery  of  England 


greatest  interest  to  me,  as  a  profound  scholar, 
to  try  to  investigate  just  how  this  peculiar  ex- 
cellence of  Oxford  arises. 

It  can  hardly  be  due  to  anything  in  the 
curriculum  or  programme  of  studies.  Indeed,  to 
any  one  accustomed  to  the  best  models  of  a  uni- 
versity curriculum  as  it  flourishes  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada,  the  programme  of  studies  is 
frankly  quite  laughable.  There  is  less  Applied 
Science  in  the  place  than  would  be  found  with 
us  in  a  theological  college.  Hardly  a  single 
professor  at  Oxford  would  recognise  a  dynamo 
if  he  met  it  in  broad  daylight.  The  Oxford 
student  learns  nothing  of  chemistry,  physics, 
heat,  plumbing,  electric  wiring,  gas-fitting  or 
the  use  of  a  blow-torch.  Any  American  col- 
lege student  can  run  a  motor  car,  take  a  gaso- 
line engine  to  pieces,  fix  a  washer  on  a  kitchen 
tap,  mend  a  broken  electric  bell,  and  give  an 
expert  opinion  on  what  has  gone  wrong  with 
the  furnace.  It  is  these  things  indeed  which 
stamp  him  as  a  college  man,  and  occasion  a  very 
pardonable  pride  in  the  minds  of  his  parents. 

86 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


But  in  all  these  things  the  Oxford  student  is  the 
merest  amateur. 

This  is  bad  enough.  But  after  all  one  might 
say  this  is  only  the  mechanical  side  of  education. 
True:  but  one  searches  in  vain  in  the  Oxford 
curriculum  for  any  adequate  recognition  of  the 
higher  and  more  cultured  studies.  Strange 
though  it  seems  to  us  on  this  side  of  the  At- 
lantic, there  are  no  courses  at  Oxford  in 
Housekeeping,  or  in  Salesmanship,  or  in  Ad- 
vertising, or  on  Comparative  Religion,  or  on 
the  influence  of  the  Press.  There  are  no  lec- 
tures whatever  on  Human  Behaviour,  on  Al- 
truism, on  Egotism,  or  on  the  Play  of  Wild 
Animals.  Apparently,  the  Oxford  student 
does  not  learn  these  things.  This  cuts  him  off 
from  a  great  deal  of  the  larger  culture  of  our 
side  of  the  Atlantic.  "What  are  you  studying 
this  year?"  I  once  asked  a  fourth  year  student 
at  one  of  our  great  colleges.  "I  am  electing 
Salesmanship  and  Religion,"  he  answered. 
Here  was  a  young  man  whose  training  was 
destined  inevitably  to  turn  him  into  a  moral 


My  Discovery  of  England 


business  man:  either  that  or  nothing.  At  Ox- 
ford Salesmanship  is  not  taught  and  Religion 
takes  the  feeble  form  of  the  New  Testament. 
The  more  one  looks  at  these  things  the  more 
amazing  it  becomes  that  Oxford  can  produce 
any  results  at  all. 

The  effect  of  the  comparison  is  heightened 
by  the  peculiar  position  occupied  at  Oxford  by 
the  professors'  lectures.  In  the  colleges  of 
Canada  and  the  United  States  the  lectures  are 
supposed  to  be  a  really  necessary  and  useful 
part  of  the  student's  training.  Again  and  again 
I  have  heard  the  graduates  of  my  own  college 
assert  that  they  had  got  as  much,  or  nearly 
as  much,  out  of  the  lectures  at  college  as  out 
of  athletics  or  the  Greek  letter  society  or  the 
Banjo  and  Mandolin  Club.  In  short,  with  us 
the  lectures  form  a  real  part  of  the  college  life. 
At  Oxford  it  is  not  so.  The  lectures,  I  under- 
stand, are  given  and  may  even  be  taken.  But 
they  are  quite  worthless  and  are  not  supposed 
to  have  anything  much  to  do  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  student's  mind.  "The  lectures 
here,"  said  a  Canadian  student  to  me,  "arc 

88 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


punk."  I  appealed  to  another  student  to  know 
if  this  was  so.  "I  don't  know  whether  I'd  call 
them  exactly  punk,"  he  answered,  "but  they're 
certainly  rotten."  Other  judgments  were  that 
the  lectures  were  of  no  importance:  that  no- 
body took  them:  that  they  don't  matter:  that 
you  can  take  them  if  you  like :  that  they  do  you 
no  harm. 

It  appears  further  that  the  professors  them- 
selves are  not  keen  on  their  lectures.  If  the 
lectures  are  called  for  they  give  them;  if  not, 
the  professor's  feelings  are  not  hurt.  He 
merely  waits  and  rests  his  brain  until  in  some 
later  year  the  students  call  for  his  lectures. 
There  are  men  at  Oxford  who  have  rested  their 
brains  this  way  for  over  thirty  years:  the  ac- 
cumulated brain  power  thus  dammed  up  is  said 
to  be  colossal. 

I  understand  that  the  key  to  this  mystery 
is  found  in  the  operations  of  the  person  called 
the  tutor.  It  is  from  him,  or  rather  with  him, 
that  the  students  learn  all  that  they  know :  one 
and  all  are  agreed  on  that.  Yet  it  is  a  little 
odd  to  know  just  how  he  does  it.  "We  go 

89 


My  Discovery  of  England 


over  to  his  rooms,"  said  one  student,  "and  he 
just  lights  a  pipe  and  talks  to  us."  "We  sit 
round  with  him,"  said  another,  "and  he  simply 
smokes  and  goes  over  our  exercises  with  us." 
From  this  and  other  evidence  I  gather  that 
what  an  Oxford  tutor  does  is  to  get  a  little 
group  of  students  together  and  smoke  at  them. 
Men  who  have  been  systematically  smoked  at 
for  four  years  turn  into  ripe  scholars.  If  any- 
body doubts  this,  let  him  go  to  Oxford  and  he 
can  see  the  thing  actually  in  operation.  A  well- 
smoked  man  speaks  and  writes  English  with  a 
grace  that  can  be  acquired  in  no  other  way. 

In  what  was  said  above,  I  seem  to  have  been 
directing  criticism  against  the  Oxford  profes- 
sors as  such:  but  I  have  no  intention  of  doing 
so.  For  the  Oxford  professor  and  his  whole 
manner  of  being  I  have  nothing  but  a  profound 
respect.  There  is  indeed  the  greatest  differ- 
ence between  the  modern  up-to-date  American 
idea  of  a  professor  and  the  English  type.  But 
even  with  us  in  older  days,  in  the  bygone  time 
when  such  people  as  Henry  Wadsworth  Long- 
fellow were  professors,  one  found  the  English 

90 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


idea;  a  professor  was  supposed  to  be  a  venera- 
ble kind  of  person,  with  snow-white  whiskers 
reaching  to  his  stomach.  He  was  expected  to 
moon  around  the  campus  oblivious  of  the  world 
around  him.  If  you  nodded  to  him  he  failed 
to  see  you.  Of  money  he  knew  nothing;  of 
business,  far  less.  He  was,  as  his  trustees  were 
proud  to  say  of  him,  "a  child." 

On  the  other  hand  he  contained  within  him 
a  reservoir  of  learning  of  such  depth  as  to  be 
practically  bottomless.  None  of  this  learn- 
ing was  supposed  to  be  of  any  material  or  com- 
mercial benefit  to  anybody.  Its  use  was  in  sav- 
ing the  soul  and  enlarging  the  mind. 

At  the  head  of  such  a  group  of  professors 
was  one  whose  beard  was  even  whiter  and 
longer,  whose  absence  of  mind  was  even  still 
greater,  and  whose  knowledge  of  money,  busi- 
ness, and  practical  affairs  was  below  zero. 
Him  they  made  the  president. 

All  this  is  changed  in  America.  A  univer- 
sity professor  is  now  a  busy,  hustling  person, 
approximating  as  closely  to  a  business  man  as 
he  can  do  it.  It  is  on  the  business  man  that  he 

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models  himself.  He  has  a  little  place  that  he 
calls  his  "office,"  with  a  typewriter  machine 
and  a  stenographer.  Here  he  sits  and  dic- 
tates letters,  beginning  after  the  best  business 
models,  "in  re  yours  of  the  eighth  ult.,  would 
say,  etc.,  etc."  He  writes  these  letters  to 
students,  to  his  fellow  professors,  to  the  presi- 
dent, indeed  to  any  people  who  will  let  him 
write  to  them.  The  number  of  letters  that  he 
writes  each  month  is  duly  counted  and  set  to 
his  credit.  If  he  writes  enough  he  will  get  a 
reputation  as  an  "executive,"  and  big  things 
may  happen  to  him.  He  may  even  be  asked 
to  step  out  of  the  college  and  take  a  post  as 
an  "executive"  in  a  soap  company  or  an  ad- 
vertising firm.  The  man,  in  short,  is  a  "hus- 
tler," an  "advertiser"  whose  highest  aim  is  to 
be  a  "live- wire."  If  he  is  not,  he  will  presently 
be  dismissed,  or,  to  use  the  business  term, 
be  "let  go,"  by  a  board  of  trustees  who  are 
themselves  hustlers  and  live-wires.  As  to  the 
professor's  soul,  he  no  longer  needs  to  think 
of  it  as  it  has  been  handed  over  along  with  all 
the  others  to  a  Board  of  Censors. 

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Oxford  as  I  See  It 


The  American  professor  deals  with  his 
students  according  to  his  lights.  It  is  his  busi- 
ness to  chase  them  along  over  a  prescribed 
ground  at  a  prescribed  pace  like  a  flock  of 
sheep.  They  all  go  humping  together  over  the 
hurdles  with  the  professor  chasing  them  with 
a  set  of  "tests"  and  "recitations,"  "marks"  and 
"attendances,"  the  whole  apparatus  obviously 
copied  from  the  time-clock  of  the  business 
man's  factory.  This  process  is  what  is  called 
"showing  results."  The  pace  set  is  necessarily 
that  of  the  slowest,  and  thus  results  in  what  I 
have  heard  Mr.  Edward  Beatty  describe  as 
the  "convoy  system  of  education." 

In  my  own  opinion,  reached  after  fifty-two 
years  of  profound  reflection,  this  system  con- 
tains in  itself  the  seeds  of  destruction.  It  puts 
a  premium  on  dulness  and  a  penalty  on  genius. 
It  circumscribes  that  latitude  of  mind  which  is 
the  real  spirit  of  learning.  If  we  persist  in  it 
we  shall  presently  find  that  true  learning  will 
fly  away  from  our  universities  and  will  take 
rest  wherever  some  individual  and  enquiring 
mind  can  mark  out  its  path  for  itself. 

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My  Discovery  of  England 


Now  the  principal  reason  why  I  am  led  to 
admire  Oxford  is  that  the  place  is  little  touched 
as  yet  by  the  measuring  of  "results,"  and  by  this 
passion  for  visible  and  provable  "efficiency." 
The  whole  system  at  Oxford  is  such  as  to  put 
a  premium  on  genius  and  to  let  mediocrity  and 
dulness  go  their  way.  On  the  dull  student 
Oxford,  after  a  proper  lapse  of  time,  confers 
a  degree  which  means  nothing  more  than  that 
he  lived  and  breathed  at  Oxford  and  kept  out 
of  jail.  This  for  many  students  is  as  much  as 
society  can  expect.  But  for  the  gifted  students 
Oxford  offers  great  opportunities.  There  is 
no  question  of  his  hanging  back  till  the  last 
sheep  has  jumped  over  the  fence.  He  need 
wait  for  no  one.  He  may  move  forward  as 
fast  as  he  likes,  following  the  bent  of  his 
genius.  If  he  has  in  him  any  ability  beyond 
that  of  the  common  herd,  his  tutor,  interested 
in  his  studies,  will  smoke  at  him  until  he  kindles 
him  into  a  flame.  For  the  tutor's  soul  is  not 
harassed  by  herding  dull  students,  with  dismis- 
sal hanging  by  a  thread  over  his  head  in  the 

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Oxford  as  I  See  It 


class  room.  The  American  professor  has  no 
time  to  be  interested  in  a  clever  student.  He 
has  time  to  be  interested  in  his  "deportment," 
his  letter-writing,  his  executive  work,  and  his 
organising  ability  and  his  hope  of  promotion 
to  a  soap  factory.  But  with  that  his  mind  is 
exhausted.  The  student  of  genius  merely 
means  to  him  a  student  who  gives  no  trouble, 
who  passes  all  his  "tests,"  and  is  present  at 
all  his  "recitations."  Such  a  student  also,  if 
he  can  be  trained  to  be  a  hustler  and  an  ad- 
vertiser, will  undoubtedly  "make  good."  But 
beyond  that  the  professor  does  not  think  of 
him.  The  everlasting  principle  of  equality  has 
inserted  itself  in  a  place  where  it  has  no  right 
to  be,  and  where  inequality  is  the  breath  of  life. 
American  or  Canadian  college  trustees  would 
be  horrified  at  the  notion  of  professors  who 
apparently  do  no  work,  give  few  or  no  lectures 
and  draw  their  pay  merely  for  existing.  Yet 
these  are  really  the  only  kind  of  professors 
worth  having, — I  mean,  men  who  can  be 
trusted  with  a  vague  general  mission  in  life, 

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My  Discovery  of  England 


with  a  salary  guaranteed  at  least  till  their  death, 
and  a  sphere  of  duties  entrusted  solely  to  their 
own  consciences  and  the  promptings  of  their 
own  desires.  Such  men  are  rare,  but  a  single 
one  of  them,  when  found,  is  worth  ten  "execu- 
tives" and  a  dozen  "organisers." 

The  excellence  of  Oxford,  then,  as  I  see  it, 
lies  in  the  peculiar  vagueness  of  the  organisa- 
tion of  its  work.  It  starts  from  the  assump- 
tion that  the  professor  is  a  really  learned  man 
whose  sole  interest  lies  in  his  own  sphere:  and 
that  a  student,  or  at  least  the  only  student  with 
whom  the  university  cares  to  reckon  seriously, 
is  a  young  man  who  desires  to  know.  This  is 
an  ancient  mediaeval  attitude  long  since  buried 
in  more  up-to-date  places  under  successive 
strata  of  compulsory  education,  state  teaching, 
the  democratisation  of  knowledge  and  the  sub- 
stitution of  the  shadow  for  the  substance,  and 
the  casket  for  the  gem.  No  doubt,  in  newer 
places  the  thing  has  got  to  be  so.  Higher  edu- 
cation in  America  flourishes  chiefly  as  a  quali- 
fication for  entrance  into  a  money-making  pro- 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


fession,  and  not  as  a  thing  in  itself.  But  in 
Oxford  one  can  still  see  the  surviving  outline 
of  a  nobler  type  of  structure  and  a  higher  in- 
spiration. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say,  however,  that  my 
judgment  of  Oxford  is  one  undiluted  stream  of 
praise.  In  one  respect  at  least  I  think  that 
Oxford  has  fallen  away  from  the  high  ideals 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  I  refer  to  the  fact  that 
it  admits  women  students  to  its  studies.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  women  were  regarded  with  a 
peculiar  chivalry  long  since  lost.  It  was  taken 
for  granted  that  their  brains  were  too  delicately 
poised  to  allow  them  to  learn  anything.  It 
was  presumed  that  their  minds  were  so  ex- 
quisitely hung  that  intellectual  effort  might  dis- 
turb them.  The  present  age  has  gone  to  the 
other  extreme:  and  this  is  seen  nowhere  more 
than  in  the  crowding  of  women  into  colleges 
originally  designed  for  men.  Oxford,  I  regret 
to  find,  has  not  stood  out  against  this  change. 

To  a  profound  scholar  like  myself,  the  pres- 
ence of  these  young  women,  many  of  them  most 

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My  Discovery  of  England 


attractive,  flittering  up  and  down  the  streets 
of  Oxford  in  their  caps  and  gowns,  is  very  dis- 
tressing. 

Who  is  to  blame  for  this  and  how  they  first 
got  in  I  do  not  know.  But  I  understand  that 
they  first  of  all  built  a  private  college  of  their 
own  close  to  Oxford,  and  then  edged  themselves 
in  foot  by  foot.  If  this  is  so  they  only  fol- 
lowed up  the  precedent  of  the  recognised 
method  in  use  in  America.  When  an  American 
college  is  established,  the  women  go  and  build 
a  college  of  their  own  overlooking  the  grounds. 
Then  they  put  on  becoming  caps  and  gowns 
and  stand  and  look  over  the  fence  at  the  college 
athletics.  The  male  undergraduates,  who  were 
originally  and  by  nature  a  hardy  lot,  were  not 
easily  disturbed.  But  inevitably  some  of  the 
senior  trustees  fell  in  love  with  the  first  year 
girls  and  became  convinced  that  coeducation 
was  a  noble  cause.  American  statistics  show 
that  between  1880  and  1900  the  number  of 
trustees  and  senior  professors  who  married 
girl  undergraduates  or  who  wanted  to  do  so 
reached  a  percentage  of, — I  forget  the  exact 

98 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


percentage;  it  was  either  a  hundred  or  a  little 
over. 

I  don't  know  just  what  happened  at  Oxford 
but  presumably  something  of  the  sort  took 
place.  In  any  case  the  women  are  now  all  over 
the  place.  They  attend  the  college  lectures, 
they  row  in  a  boat,  and  they  perambulate  the 
High  Street.  They  are  even  offering  a  serious 
competition  against  the  men.  Last  year  they 
carried  off  the  ping-pong  championship  and 
took  the  chancellor's  prize  for  needlework, 
while  in  music,  cooking  and  millinery  the  men 
are  said  to  be  nowhere. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  unless  Oxford  puts 
the  women  out  while  there  is  yet  time,  they  will 
overrun  the  whole  university.  What  this 
means  to  the  progress  of  learning  few  can  tell 
and  those  who  know  are  afraid  to  say. 

Cambridge  University,  I  am  glad  to  see,  still 
sets  its  face  sternly  against  this  innovation.  I 
am  reluctant  to  count  any  superiority  in  the 
University  of  Cambridge.  Having  twice  vis- 
ited Oxford,  having  made  the  place  a  subject 
of  profound  study  for  many  hours  at  a  time, 

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My  Discovery  of  England 


having  twice  addressed  its  undergraduates,  and 
having  stayed  at  the  Mitre  Hotel,  I  consider 
myself  an  Oxford  man.  But  I  must  admit 
that  Cambridge  has  chosen  the  wiser  part. 

Last  autumn,  while  I  was  in  London  on  my 
voyage  of  discovery,  a  vote  was  taken  at  Cam- 
bridge to  see  if  the  women  who  have  already 
a  private  college  nearby,  should  be  admitted  to 
the  university.  They  were  triumphantly  shut 
out;  and  as  a  fit  and  proper  sign  of  enthusiasm 
the  undergraduates  went  over  in  a  body  and 
knocked  down  the  gates  of  the  women's 
college.  I  know  that  it  is  a  terrible  thing  to 
say  that  any  one  approved  of  this.  All  the 
London  papers  came  out  with  headings  that 
read, — ARE  OUR  UNDERGRADUATES  TURNING 
INTO  BABOONS?  and  so  on.  The  Manchester 
Guardian  draped  its  pages  in  black  and  even  the 
London  Morning  Post  was  afraid  to  take  bold 
ground  in  the  matter.  But  I  do  know  also  that 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  secret  chuckling  and 
jubilation  in  the  London  clubs.  Nothing  was 
expressed  openly.  The  men  of  England  have 
been  too  terrorised  by  the  women  for  that. 

100 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


But  in  safe  corners  of  the  club,  out  of  earshot 
of  the  waiters  and  away  from  casual  strangers, 
little  groups  of  elderly  men  chuckled  quietly 
together.  "Knocked  down  their  gates,  eh?" 
said  the  wicked  old  men  to  one  another,  and 
then  whispered  guiltily  behind  an  uplifted  hand, 
"Serve  'em  right."  Nobody  dared  to  say  any- 
thing outside.  If  they  had  some  one  would 
have  got  up  and  asked  a  question  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  When  this  is  done  all  England 
falls  flat  upon  its  face. 

But  for  my  part  when  I  heard  of  the  Cam- 
bridge vote,  I  felt  as  Lord  Chatham  did  when 
he  said  in  parliament,  "Sir,  I  rejoice  that  Amer- 
ica has  resisted."  For  I  have  long  harboured 
views  of  my  own  upon  the  higher  education  of 
women.  In  these  days,  however,  it  requires 
no  little  hardihood  to  utter  a  single  word  of 
criticism  against  it.  It  is  like  throwing  half  a 
brick  through  the  glass  roof  of  a  conservatory. 
It  is  bound  to  make  trouble.  Let  me  hasten, 
therefore,  to  say  that  I  believe  most  heartily 
in  the  higher  education  of  women;  in  fact,  the 
higher  the  better.  The  only  question  to  my 
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My  Discovery  of  England 


mind  is:  What  is  "higher  education"  and  how 
do  you  get  it?  With  which  goes  the  second- 
ary enquiry,  What  is  a  woman  and  is  she  just 
the  same  as  a  man?  I  know  that  it  sounds  a 
terrible  thing  to  say  in  these  days,  but  I  don't 
believe  she  is. 

Let  me  say  also  that  when  I  speak  of  coedu- 
cation I  speak  of  what  I  know.  I  was  coedu- 
cated  myself  some  thirty-five  years  ago,  at  the 
very  beginning  of  the  thing.  I  learned  my 
Greek  alongside  of  a  bevy  of  beauty  on  the 
opposite  benches  that  mashed  up  the  irregular 
verbs  for  us  very  badly.  Incidentally,  those 
girls  are  all  married  long  since,  and  all  the 
Greek  they  know  now  you  could  put  under  a 
thimble.  But  of  that  presently. 

I  have  had  further  experience  as  well.  I 
spent  three  years  in  the  graduate  school  of 
Chicago,  where  coeducational  girls  were  as 
thick  as  autumn  leaves, — and  some  thicker. 
And  as  a  college  professor  at  McGill  Univer- 
sity in  Montreal,  I  have  taught  mingled  classes 
of  men  and  women  for  twenty  years. 

On  the  basis  of  which  experience  I  say  with 
102 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


assurance  that  the  thing  is  a  mistake  and  has 
nothing  to  recommend  it  but  its  relative  cheap- 
ness. Let  me  emphasise  this  last  point  and 
have  done  with  it.  Coeducation  is  of  course  a 
great  economy.  To  teach  ten  men  and  ten 
women  in  a  single  class  of  twenty  costs  only 
half  as  much  as  to  teach  two  classes.  Where 
economy  must  rule,  then,  the  thing  has  got  to  be. 
But  where  the  discussion  turns  not  on  what  is 
cheapest,  but  on  what  is  best,  then  the  case  is 
entirely  different. 

The  fundamental  trouble  is  that  men  and 
women  are  different  creatures,  with  different 
minds  and  different  aptitudes  and  different 
paths  in  life.  There  is  no  need  to  raise  here 
the  question  of  which  is  superior  and  which  is 
inferior  (though  I  think,  the  Lord  help  me,  I 
know  the  answer  to  that  too).  The  point  lies 
in  the  fact  that  they  are  different. 

But  the  mad  passion  for  equality  has  masked 
this  obvious  fact.  When  women  began  to  de- 
mand, quite  rightly,  a  share  in  higher  educa- 
tion, they  took  for  granted  that  they  wanted 
the  same  curriculum  as  the  men.  They  never 
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My  Discovery  of  England 


stopped  to  ask  whether  their  aptitudes  were 
not  in  various  directions  higher  and  better  than 
those  of  the  men,  and  whether  it  might  not  be 
better  for  their  sex  to  cultivate  the  things  which 
were  best  suited  to  their  minds.  Let  me  be 
more  explicit.  In  all  that  goes  with  physical 
and  mathematical  science,  women,  on  the  aver- 
age, are  far  below  the  standard  of  men.  There 
are,  of  course,  exceptions.  But  they  prove 
nothing.  It  is  no  use  to  quote  to  me  the  case 
of  some  brilliant  girl  who  stood  first  in  physics 
at  Cornell.  That's  nothing.  There  is  an  ele- 
phant in  the  zoo  that  can  count  up  to  ten,  yet 
I  refuse  to  reckon  myself  his  inferior. 

Tabulated  results  spread  over  years,  and  the 
actual  experience  of  those  who  teach  show  that 
in  the  whole  domain  of  mathematics  and  phys- 
ics women  are  outclassed.  At  McGill  the  girls 
of  our  first  year  have  wept  over  their  failures 
in  elementary  physics  these  twenty-five  years. 
It  is  time  that  some  one  dried  their  tears 
and  took  away  the  subject. 

But,  in  any  case,  examination  tests  arc  never 
the  whole  story.  To  those  who  know,  a  writ- 
104 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


ten  examination  is  far  from  being  a  true  cri- 
terion of  capacity.  It  demands  too  much  of 
mere  memory,  imitativeness,  and  the  insidious 
willingness  to  absorb  other  people's  ideas. 
Parrots  and  crows  would  do  admirably  in  ex- 
aminations. Indeed,  the  colleges  are  full  of 
them. 

But  take,  on  the  other  hand,  all  that  goes 
with  the  aesthetic  side  of  education,  with  imag- 
inative literature  and  the  cult  of  beauty.  Here 
women  are,  or  at  least  ought  to  be,  the  su- 
periors of  men.  Women  were  in  primitive 
times  the  first  story-tellers.  They  are  still  so 
at  the  cradle  side.  The  original  college  woman 
was  the  witch,  with  her  incantations  and  her 
prophecies  and  the  glow  of  her  bright  imag- 
ination, and  if  brutal  men  of  duller  brains  had 
not  burned  it  out  of  her,  she  would  be  incanting 
still.  To  my  thinking,  we  need  more  witches 
in  the  colleges  and  less  physics. 

I  have  seen  such  young  witches  myself, — if 

I  may  keep  the  word:  I  like  it, — in  colleges 

such  as  Wellesley  in  Massachusetts  and  Bryn 

Mawr  in  Pennsylvania,  where  there  isn't  a  man 

105 


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allowed  within  the  three  mile  limit.  To  my 
mind,  they  do  infinitely  better  thus  by  them- 
selves. They  are  freer,  less  restrained.  They 
discuss  things  openly  in  their  classes;  they  lift 
up  their  voices,  and  they  speak,  whereas  a  girl 
in  such  a  place  as  McGill,  with  men  all  about 
her,  sits  for  four  years  as  silent  as  a  frog  full 
of  shot. 

But  there  is  a  deeper  trouble  still.  The 
careers  of  the  men  and  women  who  go  to  col- 
lege together  are  necessarily  different,  and  the 
preparation  is  all  aimed  at  the  man's  career. 
The  men  are  going  to  be  lawyers,  doctors,  en- 
gineers, business  men,  and  politicians.  And 
the  women  are  not. 

There  is  no  use  pretending  about  it.  It  may 
sound  an  awful  thing  to  say,  but  the  women  are 
going  to  be  married.  That  is,  and  always  has 
been,  their  career;  and,  what  is  more,  they 
know  it;  and  even  at  college,  while  they  are 
studying  algebra  and  political  economy,  they 
have  their  eye  on  it  sideways  all  the  time.  The 
plain  fact  is  that,  after  a  girl  has  spent  four 
1 06 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


years  of  her  time  and  a  great  deal  of  her  par- 
ents' money  in  equipping  herself  for  a  career 
that  she  is  never  going  to  have,  the  wretched 
creature  goes  and  gets  married,  and  in  a  few 
years  she  has  forgotten  which  is  the  hypotenuse 
of  a  right-angled  triangle,  and  she  doesn't  care. 
She  has  much  better  things  to  think  of. 

At  this  point  some  one  will  shriek:  "But 
surely,  even  for  marriage,  isn't  it  right  that  a 
girl  should  have  a  college  education?"  To 
which  I  hasten  to  answer:  most  assuredly.  I 
freely  admit  that  a  girl  who  knows  algebra,  or 
once  knew  it,  is  a  far  more  charming  compan- 
ion and  a  nobler  wife  and  mother  than  a  girl 
who  doesn't  know  x  from  y.  But  the  point 
is  this:  Does  the  higher  education  that  fits  a 
man  to  be  a  lawyer  also  fit  a  person  to  be  a 
wife  and  mother?  Or,  in  other  words,  is  a 
lawyer  a  wife  and  mother?  I  say  he  is  not. 
Granted  that  a  girl  is  to  spend  four  years  in 
time  and  four  thousand  dollars  in  money  in  go- 
ing to  college,  why  train  her  for  a  career  that 
she  is  never  going  to  adopt?  Why  not  give 
107 


My  Discovery  of  England 


her  an  education  that  will  have  a  meaning  and 
a  harmony  with  the  real  life  that  she  is  to 
follow  ? 

For  example,  suppose  that  during  her  four 
years  every  girl  lucky  enough  to  get  a  higher 
education  spent  at  least  six  months  of  it  in  the 
training  and  discipline  of  a  hospital  as  a  nurse. 
There  is  more  education  and  character  making 
in  that  than  in  a  whole  bucketful  of  algebra. 

But  no,  the  woman  insists  on  snatching  her 
share  of  an  education  designed  by  Erasmus  or 
William  of  Wykeham  or  William  of  Occam 
for  the  creation  of  scholars  and  lawyers;  and 
when  later  on  in  her  home  there  is  a  sudden 
sickness  or  accident,  and  the  life  or  death  of 
those  nearest  to  her  hangs  upon  skill  and 
knowledge  and  a  trained  fortitude  in  emer- 
gency, she  must  needs  send  in  all  haste  for  a 
hired  woman  to  fill  the  place  that  she  herself 
has  never  learned  to  occupy. 

But  I  am  not  here  trying  to  elaborate  a  whole 

curriculum.     I  am  only  trying  to  indicate  that 

higher  education  for  the  man  is  one  thing,  for 

the  woman  another.  Nor  do  I  deny  the  fact  that 

108 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


women  have  got  to  earn  their  living.  Their 
higher  education  must  enable  them  to  do  that. 
They  cannot  all  marry  on  their  graduation 
day.  But  that  is  no  great  matter.  No  scheme 
of  education  that  any  one  is  likely  to  devise  will 
fail  in  this  respect. 

The  positions  that  they  hold  as  teachers  or 
civil  servants  they  would  fill  all  the  better  if 
their  education  were  fitted  to  their  wants. 

Some  few,  a  small  minority,  really  and  truly 
"have  a  career," — husbandless  and  childless, — 
in  which  the  sacrifice  is  great  and  the  honour  to 
them,  perhaps,  all  the  higher.  And  others  no 
doubt  dream  of  a  career  in  which  a  husband 
and  a  group  of  blossoming  children  are  carried 
as  an  appendage  to  a  busy  life  at  the  bar  or 
on  the  platform.  But  all  such  are  the  mere 
minority,  so  small  as  to  make  no  difference  to 
the  general  argument. 

But  there — I  have  written  quite  enough  to 
make  plenty  of  trouble  except  perhaps  at  Cam- 
bridge University.  So  I  return  with  relief  to 
my  general  study  of  Oxford.  Viewing  the  sit- 
uation as  a  whole,  I  am  led  then  to  the  conclu- 
109  « 


My  Discovery  of  England 


sion  that  there  must  be  something  in  the  life  of 
Oxford  itself  that  makes  for  higher  learning. 
Smoked  at  by  his  tutor,  fed  in  Henry  VIII's 
kitchen,  and  sleeping  in  a  tangle  of  ivy,  the 
student  evidently  gets  something  not  easily  ob- 
tained in  America.  And  the  more  I  reflect  on 
the  matter  the  more  I  am  convinced  that  it  is 
the  sleeping  in  the  ivy  that  does  it.  How  dif- 
ferent it  is  from  student  life  as  I  remember  it! 

When  I  was  a  student  at  the  University  of 
Toronto  thirty  years  ago,  I  lived, — from  start 
to  finish, — in  seventeen  different  boarding 
houses.  As  far  as  I  am  aware  these  houses 
have  not,  or  not  yet,  been  marked  with  tablets. 
But  they  are  still  to  be  found  in  the  vicinity  of 
McCaul  and  Darcy,  and  St.  Patrick  Streets. 
Any  one  who  doubts  the  truth  of  what  I  have 
to  say  may  go  and  look  at  them. 

I  was  not  alone  in  the  nomadic  life  that  I 
led.  There  were  hundreds  of  us  drifting  about 
in  this  fashion  from  one  melancholy  habitation 
to  another.  We  lived  as  a  rule  two  or  three 
in  a  house,  sometimes  alone.  We  dined  in  the 
basement.  We  always  had  beef,  done  up  in 
no 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


some  way  after  it  was  dead,  and  there  were 
always  soda  biscuits  on  the  table.  They  used 
to  have  a  brand  of  soda  biscuits  in  those  days 
in  the  Toronto  boarding  houses  that  I  have  not 
seen  since.  They  were  better  than  dog  bis- 
cuits but  with  not  so  much  snap.  My  con- 
temporaries will  all  remember  them.  A  great 
many  of  the  leading  barristers  and  professional 
men  of  Toronto  were  fed  on  them. 

In  the  life  we  led  we  had  practically  no  op- 
portunities for  association  on  a  large  scale,  no 
common  rooms,  no  reading  rooms,  nothing. 
We  never  saw  the  magazines, — personally  I 
didn't  even  know  the  names  of  them.  The 
only  interchange  of  ideas  we  ever  got  was  by 
going  over  to  the  Casr  Howell  Hotel  on  Uni- 
versity Avenue  and  interchanging  them  there. 

I  mention  these  melancholy  details  not  for 
their  own  sake  but  merely  to  emphasise  the 
point  that  when  I  speak  of  students'  dormi- 
tories, and  the  larger  life  which  they  offer, 
I  speak  of  what  I  know. 

If  we  had  had  at  Toronto,  when  I  was  a 
student,  the  kind  of  dormitories  and  dormitory 
in 


My  Discovery  of  England 


life  that  they  have  at  Oxford,  I  don't  think  I 
would  ever  have  graduated.  I'd  have  been 
there  still.  The  trouble  is  that  the  universities 
on  our  Continent  are  only  just  waking  up  to 
the  idea  of  what  a  university  should  mean. 
They  were,  very  largely,  instituted  and  organ- 
ised with  the  idea  that  a  university  was  a  place 
where  young  men  were  sent  to  absorb  the  con- 
tents of  books  and  to  listen  to  lectures  in  the 
class  rooms.  The  student  was  pictured  as  a 
pallid  creature,  burning  what  was  called  the 
"midnight  oil,"  his  wan  face  bent  over  his  desk. 
If  you  wanted  to  do  something  for  him  you 
gave  him  a  book:  if  you  wanted  to  do  some- 
thing really  large  on  his  behalf  you  gave  him 
a  whole  basketful  of  them.  If  you  wanted  to 
go  still  further  and  be  a  benefactor  to  the  col- 
lege at  large,  you  endowed  a  competitive  schol- 
arship and  set  two  or  more  pallid  students 
working  themselves  to  death  to  get  it. 

The  real  thing  for  the  student  is  the  life  and 
environment  that  surrounds  him.  All  that  he 
really  learns  he  learns,  in  a  sense,  by  the  active 
operation  of  his  own  intellect  and  not  as  the 

112 


passive  recipient  of  lectures.  And  for  this 
active  operation  what  he  really  needs  most  is 
the  continued  and  intimate  contact  with  his  fel- 
lows. Students  must  live  together  and  eat  to- 
gether, talk  and  smoke  together.  Experience 
shows  that  that  is  how  their  minds  really  grow. 
And  they  must  live  together  in  a  rational  and 
comfortable  way.  They  must  eat  in  a  big  din- 
ing room  or  hall,  with  oak  beams  across  the, 
ceiling,  and  the  stained  glass  in  the  windows, 
and  with  a  shield  or  tablet  here  or  there  upon 
the  wall,  to  remind  them  between  times  of  the 
men  who  went  before  them  and  left  a  name 
worthy  of  the  memory  of  the  college.  If  a 
student  is  to  get  from  his  college  what  it  ought 
to  give  him,  a  college  dormitory,  with  the  life 
in  common  that  it  brings,  is  his  absolute  right. 
A  university  that  fails  to-  give  it  to  him  is 
cheating  him. 

If  I  were  founding  a  university — and  I  say 
it  with  all  the  seriousness  of  which  I  am  capa- 
ble— I  would  found  first  a  smoking  room; 
then  when  I  had  a  little  more  money  in  hand 
I  would  found  a  dormitory;  then  after  that,  or 


My  Discovery  of  England 


more  probably  with  it,  a  decent  reading  room 
and  a  library.  After  that,  if  I  still  had  money 
over  that  I  couldn't  use,  I  would  hire  a  pro- 
fessor and  get  some  text  books. 

This  chapter  has  sounded  in  the  most  part 
like  a  continuous  eulogy  of  Oxford  with  but 
little  in  favour  of  our  American  colleges.  I 
turn  therefore  with  pleasure  to  the  more  con- 
genial task  of  showing  what  is  wrong  with  Ox- 
ford and  with  the  English  university  system 
generally,  and  the  aspect  in  which  our  American 
universities  far  excell  the  British. 

The  point  is  that  Henry  VIII  is  dead.  The 
English  are  so  proud  of  what  Henry  VIII  and 
the  benefactors  of  earlier  centuries  did  for  the 
universities  that  they  forget  the  present. 
There  is  little  or  nothing  in  England  to  com- 
pare with  the  magnificent  generosity  of  indi- 
viduals, provinces  and  states,  which  is  building 
up  the  colleges  of  the  United  States  and  Can- 
ada. There  used  to  be.  But  by  some  strange 
confusion  of  thought  the  English  people  admire 
the  noble  gifts  of  Cardinal  Wolsey  and  Henry 
VIII  and  Queen  Margaret,  and  do  not  realise 
114 


Oxford  as  I  See  It 


that  the  Carnegies  and  Rockefellers  and  the 
William  Macdonalds  are  the  Cardinal  Wolseys 
of  to-day.  The  University  of  Chicago  was 
founded  upon  oil.  McGill  University  rests 
largely  on  a  basis  of  tobacco.  In  America  the 
world  of  commerce  and  business  levies  on  itself 
a  noble  tribute  in  favour  of  the  higher  learn- 
ing. In  England,  with  a  few  conspicuous  ex- 
ceptions, such  as  that  at  Bristol,  there  is  little 
of  the  sort.  The  feudal  families  are  content 
with  what  their  remote  ancestors  have  done: 
they  do  not  try  to  emulate  it  in  any  great  degree. 
In  the  long  run  this  must  count.  Of  all  the 
various  reforms  that  are  talked  of  at  Oxford, 
and  of  all  the  imitations  of  American  methods 
that  are  suggested,  the  only  one  worth  while, 
to  my  thinking,  is  to  capture  a  few  millionaires, 
give  them  honorary  degrees  at  a  million  pounds 
sterling  apiece,  and  tell  them  to  imagine  that 
they  are  Henry  the  Eighth.  I  give  Oxford 
warning  that  if  this  is  not  done  the  place  will 
not  last  another  two  centuries. 


VI 

THE  BRITISH  AND  THE 
AMERICAN  PRESS 


VI. — The  British  and  the 
American  Press 

THE  only  paper  from  which  a  man  can 
really  get  the  news  of  the  world  in  a 
shape  that  he   can  understand  is   the 
newspaper  of  his  oWn  "home  town." 
For  me,  unless  I  can  have  the  Montreal  Gazette 
at  my  breakfast,  and  the  Montreal  Star  at  my 
dinner,  I  don't  really  know  what  is  happening. 
In  the  same  way  I  have  seen  a  man  from  the 
south   of   Scotland   settle   down   to   read   the 
Dumfries  Chronicle  with  a  deep  sigh  of  sat- 
isfaction:  and  a  man  from  Burlington,   Ver- 
mont, pick  up  the  Burlington  Eagle  and  study 
the  foreign  news  in  it  as  the  only  way  of  getting 
at  what  was  really  happening  in  France  and 
Germany. 

The  reason  is,  I  suppose,  that  there  are  dif- 
ferent ways  of  serving  up  the  news  and  we  each. 


My  Discovery  of  England 


get  used  to  our  own.  Some  people  like  the 
news  fed  to  them  gently:  others  like  it  thrown 
at  them  in  a  bombshell:  some  prefer  it  to  be 
made  as  little  of  as  possible;  they  want  it  min- 
imised :  others  want  the  maximum. 

This  is  where  the  greatest  difference  lies  be- 
tween the  British  newspapers  and  those  of  the 
United  States  and  Canada.  With  us  in  Amer- 
ica the  great  thing  is  to  get  the  news  and  shout 
it  at  the  reader;  in  England  they  get  the  news 
and  then  break  it  to  him  as  gently  as  possible. 
Hence  the  big  headings,  the  bold  type,  and  the 
double  columns  of  the  American  paper,  and 
the  small  headings  and  the  general  air  of  quiet 
and  respectability  of  the  English  Press. 

It  is  quite  beside  the  question  to  ask  which 
is  the  better.  Neither  is.  They  are  different 
things:  that's  all.  The  English  newspaper  is 
designed  to  be  read  quietly,  propped  up  against 
the  sugar  bowl  of  a  man  eating  a  slow  break- 
fast in  a  quiet  corner  of  a  club,  or  by  a  retired 
banker  seated  in  a  leather  chair  nearly  asleep, 
or  by  a  country  vicar  sitting  in  a  wicker  chair 
under  a  pergola.  The  American  paper  is  for 

120 


British  and  American  Press 

reading  by  a  man  hanging  on  the  straps  of  a 
clattering  subway  express,  by  a  man  eating 
at  a  lunch  counter,  by  a  man  standing  on  one 
leg,  by  a  man  getting  a  two-minute  shave,  or 
by  a  man  about  to  have  his  teeth  drawn  by  a 
dentist. 

In  other  words,  there  is  a  difference  of  at- 
mosphere. It  is  not  merely  in  the  type  and  the 
lettering,  it  is  a  difference  in  the  way  the  news 
is  treated  and  the  kind  of  words  that  are  used. 
In  America  we  love  such  words  as  "gun-men" 
and  "joy-ride"  and  "death-cell" :  in  England 
they  prefer  "person  of  doubtful  character"  and 
"motor  travelling  at  excessive  speed"  and 
"corridor  No.  6."  If  a  milk-waggon  collides 
in  the  street  with  a  coal-cart,  we  write  that  a 
"life-waggon"  has  struck  a  "death-cart."  We 
call  a  murderer  a  "thug"  or  a  "gun-man"  or  a 
"yeg-man."  In  England  they  simply  call  him 
"the  accused  who  is  a  grocer's  assistant  in 
Houndsditch."  That  designation  would  knock 
any  decent  murder  story  to  pieces. 

Hence  comes  the  great  difference  between 
the  American  "lead"  or  opening  sentence  of 
121 


My  Discovery  of  England 


the  article,  and  the  English  method  of  com- 
mencement. In  the  American  paper  the  idea 
is  that  the  reader  is  so  busy  that  he  must  first 
be  offered  the  news  in  one  gulp.  After  that  if 
he  likes  it  he  can  go  on  and  eat  some  more  of 
it.  So  the  opening  sentence  must  give  the 
whole  thing.  Thus,  suppose  that  a  leading 
member  of  the  United  States  Congress  has  com- 
mitted suicide.  This  is  the  way  in  which  the 
American  reporter  deals  with  it. 

"Seated  in  his  room  at  the  Grand  Hotel  with 
his  carpet  slippers  on  his  feet  and  his  body 
wrapped  in  a  blue  dressing-gown  with  pink  in- 
sertions, after  writing  a  letter  of  farewell  to 
his  wife  and  emptying  a  bottle  of  Scotch  whisky 
in  which  he  exonerated  her  from  all  culpability 
in  his  death,  Congressman  Ahasuerus  P.  Tigg 
was  found  by  night-watchman,  Henry  T. 
Smith,  while  making  his  rounds  as  usual  with 
four  bullets  in  his  stomach." 

Now  let  us  suppose  that  a  leading  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons  in  England  had 
done  the  same  thing.  Here  is  the  way  it  would 
be  written  up  in  a  first-class  London  newspaper. 

122 


British  and  American  Press 

The  heading  would  be  HOME  AND  GENERAL; 
INTELLIGENCE.  That  is  inserted  so  as  to  keep 
the  reader  soothed  and  quiet  and  is  no  doubt 
thought  better  than  the  American  heading  BUG- 
HOUSE CONGRESSMAN  BLOWS  OUT  BRAINS  INI 
HOTEL.  After  the  heading  HOME  AND  GEN- 
ERAL INTELLIGENCE  the  English  paper  runs 
the  subheading  INCIDENT  AT  THE  GRAND 
HOTEL.  The  reader  still  doesn't  know  what 
happened;  he  isn't  meant  to.  Then  the  article 
begins  like  this: 

"The  Grand  Hotel,  which  is  situated  at  the 
corner  of  Millbank  and  Victoria  Streets,  was- 
the  scene  last  night  of  a  distressing  incident." 

"What  is  it?"  thinks  the  reader.  "The 
hotel  itself,  which  is  an  old  Georgian  structure 
dating  probably  from  about  1750,  is  a  quiet 
establishment,  its  clientele  mainly  drawn  from 
business  men  in  the  cattle-droving  and  distillery 
business  from  South  Wales." 

"What  happened?"  thinks  the  reader. 

"Its  cuisine  has  long  been  famous  for  the 
excellence  of  its  boiled  shrimps." 

"What  happened?" 

123 


My  Discovery  of  England 


"While  the  hotel  itself  is  also  known  as  the 
meeting  place  of  the  Surbiton  Harmonic  Soci- 
ety and  other  associations." 

"What  happened?" 

"Among  the  more  prominent  of  the  guests 
of  the  hotel  has  been  numbered  during  the  pres- 
ent Parliamentary  session  Mr.  Llewylln  Ap. 
Jones,  M.  P.,  for  South  Llanfydd.  Mr.  Jones 
apparently  came  to  his  room  last  night  at  about 
ten  P.M.,  and  put  on  his  carpet  slippers  and 
his  blue  dressing  gown.  He  then  seems  to  have 
gone  to  the  cupboard  and  taken  from  it  a 
whisky  bottle  which  however  proved  to  be 
empty.  The  unhappy  gentleman  then  appar- 
ently went  to  bed.  .  .  ." 

At  that  point  the  American  reader  probably 
stops  reading,  thinking  that  he  has  heard  it  all. 
The  unhappy  man  found  that  the  bottle  was 
empty  and  went  to  bed:  very  natural:  and  the 
affair  very  properly  called  a  "distressing  in- 
cident": quite  right.  But  the  trained  English 
reader  would  know  that  there  was  more  to 
come  and  that  the  air  of  quiet  was  only  as- 
sumed, and  he  would  read  on  and  on  until  at 
124 


British  and  American  Press 

last  the  tragic  interest  heightened,  the  four 
shots  were  fired,  with  a  good  long  pause  after 
each  for  discussion  of  the  path  of  the  bullet 
through  Mr.  Ap.  Jones. 

I  am  not  saying  that  either  the  American  way 
or  the  British  way  is  the  better.  They  are  just 
two  different  ways,  that's  all.  But  the  result 
is  that  anybody  from  the  United  States  or  Can- 
ada reading  the  English  papers  gets  the  im- 
pression that  nothing  is  happening:  and  an  Eng- 
lish reader  of  our  newspapers  with  us  gets  the 
idea  that  the  whole  place  is  in  a  tumult. 

When  I  was  in  London  I  used  always,  in 
glancing  at  the  morning  papers,  to  get  a  first 
impression  that  the  whole  world  was  almost 
asleep.  There  was,  for  example,  a  heading 
called  INDIAN  INTELLIGENCE  that  showed, 
on  close  examination,  that  two  thousand  Par- 
sees  had  died  of  the  blue  plague,  that  a  pow- 
der boat  had  blown  up  at  Bombay,  that 
some  one  had  thrown  a  couple  of  bombs  at  one 
of  the  provincial  governors,  and  that  four 
thousand  agitators  had  been  sentenced  to 
twenty  years  hard  labour  each.  But  the  whole 
125 


My  Discovery  of  England 


thing  was  just  called  "Indian  Intelligence." 
Similarly,  there  was  a  little  item  called,  "Our 
Chinese  Correspondent."  That  one  explained 
ten  lines  down,  in  very  small  type,  that  a  hun- 
dred thousand  Chinese  had  been  drowned  in  a 
flood.  And  there  was  another  little  item 
labelled  "Foreign  Gossip,"  under  which  was 
mentioned  that  the  Pope  was  dead,  and  that 
the  President  of  Paraguay  had  been  assassi- 
nated. 

In  short,  I  got  the  impression  that  I  was 
living  in  an  easy  drowsy  world,  as  no  doubt 
the  editor  meant  me  to.  It  was  only  when  the 
Montreal  Star  arrived  by  post  that  I  felt  that 
the  world  was  still  revolving  pretty  rapidly  on 
its  axis  and  that  there  was  still  something  doing. 

As  with  the  world  news  so  it  is  with  the 
minor  events  of  ordinary  life, — birth,  death, 
marriage,  accidents,  crime.  Let  me  give  an 
illustration.  Suppose  that  in  a  suburb  of  Lon- 
don a  housemaid  has  endeavoured  to  poison 
her  employer's  family  by  putting  a  drug  in  the 
coffee.  Now  on  our  side  of  the  water  we 
should  write  that  little  incident  up  in  a  way  to 
126 


British  and  American  Press 

give  it  life,  and  put  headings  over  it  that  would 
capture  the  reader's  attention  in  a  minute.  We 
should  begin  it  thus: 

PRETTY  PARLOR  MAID 

DEALS  DEATH-DRINK 

TO  CLUBMAN'S  FAMILY 

The  English  reader  would  ask  at  once,  how 
do  we  know  that  the  parlor  maid  is  pretty? 
We  don't.  But  our  artistic  sense  tells  us  that 
she  ought  to  be.  Pretty  parlor  maids  are  the 
only  ones  we  take  any  interest  in:  if  an  ugly 
parlor  maid  poisoned  her  employer's  family 
we  should  hang  her.  Then  again,  the  English 
reader  would  say,  how  do  we  know  that  the 
man  is  a  clubman?  Have  we  ascertained  this 
fact  definitely,  and  if  so,  of  what  club  or  clubs 
is  he  a  member?  Well,  we  don't  know,  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  the  thing  is  self-evident.  Any 
man  who  has  romance  enough  in  his  life  to  be 
poisoned  by  a  pretty  housemaid  ought  to  be 
in  a  club.  That's  the  place  for  him.  In  fact, 
with  us  the  word  club  man  doesn't  necessarily 
127 


My  Discovery  of  England 


mean  a  man  who  belongs  to  a  club:  it  is  defined 
as  a  man  who  is  arrested  in  a  gambling  den,  or 
fined  for  speeding  a  motor  or  who  shoots  an- 
other person  in  a  hotel  corridor.  Therefore 
this  man  must  be  a  club  man.  Having  settled 
the  heading,  we  go  on  with  the  text : 

"Brooding  over  love  troubles  which  she  has 
hitherto  refused  to  divulge  under  the  most 
grilling  fusillade  of  rapid-fire  questions  shot 
at  her  by  the  best  brains  of  the  New  York  police 
force,  Miss  Mary  De  Forrest,  a  handsome 
brunette  thirty-six  inches  around  the  hips,  em- 
ployed as  a  parlor  maid  in  the  residence  of 
Mr.  Spudd  Bung,  a  well-known  club  man  forty- 
two  inches  around  the  chest,  was  arrested  yes- 
terday by  the  flying  squad  of  the  emergency 
police  after  having,  so  it  is  alleged,  put  four 
ounces  of  alleged  picrate  of  potash  into  the  al- 
leged coffee  of  her  employer's  family's  alleged 
breakfast  at  their  residence  on  Hudson  Heights 
in  the  most  fashionable  quarter  of  the  metropo- 
lis. Dr.  Slink,  the  leading  fashionable  prac- 
titioner of  the  neighbourhood  who  was  imme- 
128 


British  and  American  Press 

diately  summoned  said  that  but  for  his  own 
extraordinary  dexterity  and  promptness  the 
death  of  the  whole  family,  if  not  of  the  entire 
entourage,  was  a  certainty.  The  magistrate  in 
committing  Miss  De  Forrest  for  trial  took  occa- 
sion to  enlarge  upon  her  youth  and  attractive 
appearance:  he  castigated  the  moving  pictures 
severely  and  said  that  he  held  them  together 
with  the  public  school  system  and  the  present 
method  of  doing  the  hair,  directly  responsible 
for  the  crimes  of  the  kind  alleged." 

Now  when  you  read  this  over  you  begin  to 
feel  that  something  big  has  happened.  Here 
is  a  man  like  Dr.  Slink,  all  quivering  with 
promptness  and  dexterity.  Here  is  an  in- 
serted picture,  a  photograph,  a  brick  house  in 
a  row  marked  with  a  cross  (+)  and  labelled 
"The  Bung  Residence  as  it  appeared  imme- 
diately after  the  alleged  outrage."  It  isn't 
really.  It  is  just  a  photograph  that  we  use  for 
this  sort  of  thing  and  have  grown  to  like.  It  is 
called  sometimes: — ^'Residence  of  Senator 
Borah"  or  "Scene  of  the  Recent  Spiritualistic 
129 


My  Discovery  of  England 


Manifestations"  or  anything  of  the  sort.  As 
long  as  it  is  marked  with  a  cross  (  +  )  the 
reader  will  look  at  it  with  interest. 

In  other  words  we  make  something  out  of  an 
occurrence  like  this.  It  doesn't  matter  if  it  all 
fades  out  afterwards  when  it  appears  that 
Mary  De  Forrest  merely  put  ground  allspice 
into  the  coffee  in  mistake  for  powdered  sugar 
and  that  the  family  didn't  drink  it  anyway. 
The  reader  has  already  turned  to  other  mys- 
teries. 

But  contrast  the  pitifully  tame  way  in  which 
the  same  event  is  written  up  in  England.  Here 
it  is: 

SUBURBAN  ITEM 

"Yesterday  at  the  police  court  of  Surbiton- 
on-Thames  Mary  Forrester,  a  servant  in  the 
employ  of  Mr.  S.  Bung  was  taken  into  custody 
on  a  chargo  of  having  put  a  noxious  prepara- 
tion, possibly  poison,  into  the  coffee  of  her  em- 
ployer's family.  The  young  woman  was  re- 
manded for  a  week." 

Look  at  that.  Mary  Forrester  a  servant? 
130 


British  and  American  Press 

How  wide  was  she  round  the  chest?  It 
doesn't  say.  Mr.  S.  Bung?  Of  what  club  was 
he  a  member?  None,  apparently.  Then  who 
cares  if  he  is  poisoned?  And  "the  young 
woman !"  What  a  way  to  speak  of  a  decent  girl 
who  never  did  any  other  harm  than  to  poison 
a  club  man.  And  the  English  magistrate! 
What  a  tame  part  he  must  have  played:  his 
name  indeed  doesn't  occur  at  all:  apparently 
he  didn't  enlarge  on  the  girl's  good  looks,  or 
"comment  on  her  attractive  appearance,"  or 
anything.  I  don't  suppose  that  he  even  asked 
Mary  Forrester  out  to  lunch  with  him. 

Notice  also  that,  according  to  the  English 
way  of  writing  the  thing  up,  as  soon  as  the  girl 
was  remanded  for  a  week  the  incident  is  closed. 
The  English  reporter  doesn't  apparently  know 
enough  to  follow  Miss  De  Forrest  to  her  home 
(called  "the  De  Forrest  Residence"  and 
marked  with  a  cross,  H-).  The  American  re- 
porter would  make  certain  to  supplement  what 
went  above  with  further  information  of  this 
fashion.  "Miss  De  Forrest  when  seen  later 
at  her  own  home  by  a  representative  of  The 


My  Discovery  of  England 


Eagle  said  that  she  regretted  very  much  having 
been  put  to  the  necessity  of  poisoning  Mr. 
Bung.  She  had  in  the  personal  sense  nothing 
against  Mr.  Bung  and  apart  from  poisoning 
him  she  had  every  respect  for  Mr.  Bung.  Miss 
De  Forrest,  who  talks  admirably  on  a  variety 
of  topics,  expressed  herself  as  warmly  in  favour 
of  the  League  of  Nations  and  as  a  devotee  of 
the  short  ballot  and  proportional  representa- 
tion." 

Any  American  reader  who  studies  the  Eng- 
lish Press  comes  upon  these  wasted  opportuni- 
ties every  day.  There  are  indeed  certain  jour- 
nals of  a  newer  type  which  are  doing  their  best 
to  imitate  us.  But  they  don't  really  get  it  yet. 
They  use  type  up  to  about  one  inch  and  after 
that  they  get  afraid. 

I  hope  that  in  describing  the  spirit  of  the 
English  Press  I  do  not  seem  to  be  writing  with 
any  personal  bitterness.  I  admit  that  there 
might  be  a  certain  reason  for  such  a  bias.  Dur- 
ing my  stay  in  England  I  was  most  anxious  to 
appear  as  a  contributor  to  some  of  the  leading 
papers.  This  is,  with  the  English,  a  thing  that 
132 


British  and  American  Press 

always  adds  prestige.  To  be  able  to  call  one- 
self a  "contributor"  to  the  Times  or  to  Punch 
or  the  Morning  Post  or  the  Spectator,  is  a  high 
honour.  I  have  met  these  "contributors"  all 
over  the  British  Empire.  Some,  I  admit,  look 
strange.  An  ancient  wreck  in  the  back  bar  of 
an  Ontario  tavern  (ancient  regime)  has  told 
me  that  he  was  a  contributor  to  the  Times :  the 
janitor  of  the  building  where  I  lived  admits 
that  he  is  a  contributor  to  Punch:  a  man  ar- 
rested in  Bristol  for  vagrancy  while  I  was  in 
England  pleaded  that  he  was  a  contributor 
to  the  Spectator.  In  fact,  it  is  an  honour  that 
everybody  seems  to  be  able  to  get  but  me. 

I  had  often  tried  before  I  went  to  England 
to  contribute  to  the  great  English  newspapers. 
I  had  never  succeeded.  But  I  hoped  that  while 
in  England  itself  the  very  propinquity  of  the 
atmosphere,  I  mean  the  very  contiguity  of  the 
surroundings,  would  render  the  attempt  easier. 
I  tried  and  I  failed.  My  failure  was  all  the 
more  ignominious  in  that  I  had  very  direct  per- 
sonal encouragement.  "By  all  means,"  said 
the  editor  of  the  London  Times,  "do  some- 
133 


My  Discovery  of  England 


thing  for  us  while  you  are  here.  Best  of  all, 
do  something  in  a  political  way;  that's  rather 
our  special  line."  I  had  already  received  al- 
most an  identical  encouragement  from  the  Lon- 
don Morning  Post,  and  in  a  more  qualified  way 
from  the  Manchester  Guardian.  In  short,  suc- 
cess seemed  easy. 

I  decided  therefore  to  take  some  simple  polit- 
ical event  of  the  peculiar  kind  that  always 
makes  a  stir  in  English  politics  and  write  it 
up  for  these  English  papers.  To  simplify  mat- 
ters I  thought  it  better  to  use  one  and  the  same 
incident  and  write  it  up  in  three  different  ways 
and  get  paid  for  it  three  times.  All  of  those 
who  write  for  the  Press  will  understand  the 
motive  at  once.  I  waited  therefore  and 
watched  the  papers  to  see  if  anything  interest- 
ing might  happen  to  the  Ahkoond  of  Swat  or 
the  Sandjak  of  Novi  Bazar  or  any  other  native 
potentate.  Within  a  couple  of  days  I  got  what 
I  wanted  in  the  following  item,  which  I  need 
hardly  say  is  taken  word  for  word  from  the 
Press  despatches: 

134 


British  and  American  Press 

"Perim,  via  Bombay.  News  comes  by  mes- 
senger that  the  Shriek  of  Kowfat  who  has  been 
living  under  the  convention  of  1898  has  vio- 
lated the  modus  operandi.  He  is  said  to  have 
torn  off  his  suspenders,  dipped  himself  in  oil 
and  proclaimed  a  Jehad.  The  situation  is 
critical." 

Everybody  who  knows  England  knows  that 
this  is  just  the  kind  of  news  that  the  English 
love.  On  our  side  of  the  Atlantic  we  should 
be  bothered  by  the  fact  that  we  did  not  know 
where  Kowfat  is,  nor  what  was  the  convention 
of  1898.  They  are  not.  They  just  take  it 
for  granted  that  Kowfat  is  one  of  the  many 
thousand  places  that  they  "own,"  somewhere 
in  the  outer  darkness.  They  have  so  many 
Kowfats  that  they  cannot  keep  track  of  them. 

I  knew  therefore  that  everybody  would  be 
interested  in  any  discussion  of  what  was  at  once 
called  "the  Kowfat  Crisis"  and  I  wrote  it  up. 
I  resisted  the  temptation  to  begin  after  the 
'American  fashion,  "Shriek  sheds  suspenders," 
and  suited  the  writing,  as  I  thought,  to  the  mar- 
135 


My  Discovery  of  England 


ket  I  was  writing  for.  I  wrote  up  the  incident 
for  the  Morning  Post  after  the  following 
fashion: 

"The  news  from  Kowfat  affords  one  more  in- 
stance of  a  painful  back-down  on  the  part  of 
the  Government.  Our  policy  of  spineless  su- 
pineness  is  now  reaping  its  inevitable  reward. 
To  us  there  is  only  one  thing  to  be  done.  If 
the  Shriek  has  torn  off  his  suspenders  he  must 
be  made  to  put  them  on  again.  We  have  al- 
ways held  that  where  the  imperial  prestige  of 
this  country  is  concerned  there  is  no  room  for 
hesitation.  In  the  present  instance  our  pres- 
tige is  at  stake:  the  matter  involves  our  repu- 
tation in  the  eyes  of  the  surrounding  natives, 
the  Bantu  Hottentots,  the  Negritos,  the  Dwarf 
Men  of  East  Abyssinia,  and  the  Dog  Men  of 
Darfur.  What  will  they  think  of  us?  If  we 
fail  in  this  crisis  their  notion  of  us  will  fall  fifty 
per  cent.  In  our  opinion  this  country  cannot 
stand  a  fifty  per  cent  drop  in  the  estimation  of 
the  Dog  Men.  The  time  is  one  that  demands 
action.  An  ultimatum  should  be  sent  at  once 
to  the  Shriek  of  Kowfat.  If  he  has  one  al- 

136 


British  and  American  Press 

ready  we  should  send  him  another.  He  should 
be  made  at  once  to  put  on  his  suspenders.  The 
oil  must  be  scraped  off  him,  and  he  must  be  told 
plainly  that  if  a  pup  like  him  tries  to  start  a 
Jehad  he  will  have  to  deal  with  the  British 
Navy.  We  call  the  Shriek  a  pup  in  no  sense 
of  belittling  him  as  our  imperial  ally  but  be- 
cause we  consider  that  the  present  is  no  time 
for  half  words  and  we  do  not  regard  pup  ai 
half  a  word.  Events  such  as  the  present,  rock- 
ing the  Empire  to  its  base,  make  one  long  for 
the  spacious  days  of  a  Salisbury  or  a  Queen 
Elizabeth,  or  an  Alfred  the  Great  or  a  Julius 
Caesar.  We  doubt  whether  the  present  Cab- 
inet is  in  this  class." 

Not  to  lose  any  time  in  the  coming  and  go- 
ing of  the  mail,  always  a  serious  thought  for  the 
contributor  to  the  Press  waiting  for  a  cheque, 
I  sent  another  editorial  on  the  same  topic 
to  the  Manchester  Guardian.  It  ran  as  fol- 
lows: 

"The  action  of  the  Shriek  of  Kowfat  in  pro- 
claiming a  Jehad  against  us  is  one  that  amply 
justifies  all  that  we  have  said  editorially  since 
137 


My  Discovery  of  England 


Jeremy  Bentham  died.  We  have  always  held 
that  the  only  way  to  deal  with  a  Mohammedan 
potentate  like  the  Shriek  is  to  treat  him  like  a 
Christian.  The  Khalifate  of  Kowfat  at  pres- 
ent buys  its  whole  supply  of  cotton  piece  goods 
in  our  market  and  pays  cash.  The  Shriek,  who 
is  a  man  of  enlightenment,  has  consistently  up- 
held the  principles  of  Free  Trade.  Not  only 
are  our  exports  of  cotton  piece  goods,  bibles, 
rum,  and  beads  constantly  increasing,  but  they 
arc  more  than  offset  by  our  importation  from 
Kowfat  of  ivory,  rubber,  gold,  and  oil.  In 
short,  we  have  never  seen  the  principles  of  Free 
Trade  better  illustrated.  The  Shriek,  it  is  now 
reported,  refuses  to  wear  the  braces  presented 
to  him  by  our  envoy  at  the  time  of  his  corona- 
tion five  years  ago.  He  is  said  to  have  thrown 
them  into  the  mud.  But  we  have  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  this  is  meant  as  a  blow  at  our 
prestige.  It  may  be  that  after  five  years  of 
use  the  little  pulleys  of  the  braces  no  longer 
work  properly.  We  have  ourselves  in  our  per- 
sonal life  known  instances  of  this,  and  can  speak 
138 


British  and  American  Press 

of  the  sense  of  irritation  occasioned.  Even  we 
have  thrown  on  the  floor  ours.  And  in  any 
case,  as  we  have  often  reminded  our  readers, 
what  is  prestige?  If  any  one  wants  to  hit  us, 
let  him  hit  us  right  there.  We  regard  a  blow 
at  our  trade  as  far  more  deadly  than  a  blow  at 
our  prestige.  • 

"The  situation  as  we  see  it  demands  imme- 
diate reparation  on  our  part.  The  principal 
grievance  of  the  Shriek  arises  from  the  exist- 
ence of  our  fort  and  garrison  on  the  Kowfat 
river.  Our  proper  policy  is  to  knock  down  the 
fort,  and  either  remove  the  garrison  or  give  it 
to  the  Shriek.  We  are  convinced  that  as  soon 
as  the  Shriek  realises  that  we  are  prepared  to 
treat  him  in  the  proper  Christian  spirit,  he  will 
at  once  respond  with  true  Mohammedan,  gen- 
erosity. 

"We  have  further  to  remember  that  in  what 
we  do  we  are  being  observed  by  the  neighbour- 
ing tribes,  the  Negritos,  the  Dwarf  Men,  and 
the  Dog  Men  of  Darfur.  These  are  not  only 
shrewd  observers  but  substantial  customers. 

139 


My  Discovery  of  England 


The  Dwarf  Men  at  present  buy  all  their  cotton 
on  the  Manchester  market  and  the  Dog  Men 
depend  on  us  for  their  soap. 

"The  present  crisis  is  one  in  which  the  nation 
needs  statesmanship  and  a  broad  outlook  upon 
the  world.  In  the  existing  situation  we  need 
not  the  duplicity  of  a  Machiavelli,  but  the  com- 
manding prescience  of  a  Gladstone  or  an  Alfred 
the  Great,  or  a  Julius  Caesar.  Luckily  we 
have  exactly  this  type  of  man  at  the  head  of 
affairs." 

After  completing  the  above  I  set  to  work 
without  delay  on  a  similar  exercise  for  the 
London  Times.  The  special  excellence  of  the 
Times,  as  everybody  knows  is  its  fulness  of  in- 
formation. For  generations  past  the  Times 
has  commanded  a  peculiar  minuteness  of  knowl- 
edge about  all  parts  of  the  Empire.  It  is  the 
proud  boast  of  this  great  journal  that  to  what- 
ever far  away,  outlandish  part  of  the  Empire 
you  may  go,  you  will  always  find  a  correspond- 
€nt  of  the  Times  looking  for  something  to  do. 
It  is  said  that  the  present  proprietor  has  laid 
it  down  as  his  maxim,  "I  don't  want  men  who 
140 


British  and  American  Press 

think;  I  want  men  who  know."  The  arrange- 
ments for  thinking  are  made  separately. 

Incidentally  I  may  say  that  I  had  personal 
opportunities  while  I  was  in  England  of  real- 
ising that  the  reputation  of  the  Times  staff  for 
the  possession  of  information  is  well  founded. 
Dining  one  night  with  some  members  of  the 
staff,  I  happened  to  mention  Saskatchewan. 
One  of  the  editors  at  the  other  end  of  the  table 
looked  up  at  the  mention  of  the  name.  "Sas- 
katchewan," he  said,  "ah,  yes;  that's  not  far 
from  Alberta,  is  it?"  and  then  turned  quietly  to 
his  food  again.  When  I  remind  the  reader 
that  Saskatchewan  is  only  half  an  inch  from 
Alberta  he  may  judge  of  the  nicety  of  the 
knowledge  involved.  Having  all  this  in  mind, 
I  recast  the  editorial  and  sent  it  to  the  London 
Times  as  follows: 

"The  news  that  the  Sultan  of  Kowfat  has 
thrown  away  his  suspenders  renders  it  of  in- 
terest to  indicate  the  exact  spot  where  he  has 
thrown  them.  (See  map).  Kowfat,  lying  as 
the  reader  knows,  on  the  Kowfat  River,  oc- 
cupies the  hinterland  between  the  back  end  of 
141 


My  Discovery  of  England 


south-west  Somaliland  and  the  east,  that  is  to 
say,  the  west,  bank  of  Lake  P'schu.  It  thus 
forms  an  enclave  between  the  Dog  Men  of 
Darfur  and  the  Negritos  of  T'chk.  The  in- 
habitants of  Kowfat  are  a  coloured  race  three 
quarters  negroid  and  more  than  three  quarters 
tabloid. 

"As  a  solution  of  the  present  difficulty,  the 
first  thing  required  in  our  opinion  is  to  send  out 
a  boundary  commission  to  delineate  more  ex- 
actly still  just  where  Kowfat  is.  After  that  an 
ethnographical  survey  might  be  completed." 
•  .  »  .  . 

It  was  a  matter  not  only  of  concern  but  of 
surprise  to  me  that  not  one  of  the  three  con- 
tributions recited  above  was  accepted  by  the 
English  Press.  The  Morning  Post  complained 
that  my  editorial  was  not  firm  enough  in  tone, 
the  Guardian  that  it  was  not  humane  enough, 
the  Times  that  I  had  left  out  the  latitude  and 
longitude  always  expected  by  their  readers. 

I  thought  it  not  worth  while  to  bother  to 
revise  the  articles  as  I  had  meantime  conceived 
the  idea. that  the  same  material  might  be  used 
142 


British  and  American  Press 

in  the  most  delightfully  amusing  way  as  the 
basis  of  a  poem  for  Punch.  Everybody  knows 
the  kind  of  verses  that  are  contributed  to 
Punch  by  Sir  Owen  Seaman  and  Mr.  Charles 
Graves  and  men  of  that  sort.  And  everybody 
has  been  struck,  as  I  have,  by  the  extraordinary 
easiness  of  the  performance.  All  that  one 
needs  is  to  get  some  odd  little  incident,  such  as 
the  revolt  of  the  Sultan  of  Kowfat,  make  up 
an  amusing  title,  and  then  string  the  verses  to- 
gether in  such  a  way  as  to  make  rhymes  with  all 
the  odd  words  that  come  into  the  narrative. 
In  fact,  the  thing  is  ease  itself. 

I  therefore  saw  a  glorious  chance  with  the 
Sultan  of  Kowfat.  Indeed,  I  fairly  chuckled 
to  myself  when  I  thought  what  amusing  rhymes 
could  be  made  with  "Negritos,"  "modus  oper- 
andi"  and  "Dog  Men  of  Darfur."  I  can 
scarcely  imagine  anything  more  excruciatingly 
funny  than  the  rhymes  which  can  be  made  with 
them.  And  as  for  the  title,  bringing  in  the 
word  Kowfat  or  some  play  upon  it,  the  thing 
is  perfectly  obvious.  The  idea  amused  me  so 
much  that  I  set  to  work  at  the  poem  at  once. 

143 


My  Discovery  of  England 


I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  failed  to  complete  it. 
Not  that  I  couldn't  have  done  so,  given  time; 
I  am  quite  certain  that  if  I  had  had  about  two 
years  I  could  have  done  it.  The  main  structure 
of  the  poem,  however,  is  here  and  I  give  it  for 
what  it  is  worth.  Even  as  it  is  it  strikes  me 
as  extraordinarily  good.  Here  it  is : 

Title 

Kowfat 


Verse  One 

i 

modus  operandi; 


Negritos: 
P'shu. 


Verse  Two 


Khalifate; 

r ,. .,. . .  .Dog  Men  of  Darfur: 

,' T'chk. 

144 


British  and  American  Press 

Excellent  little  thing,  isn't  it?  All  it  needs 
is  the  rhymes.  As  far  as  it  goes  it  has  just 
exactly  the  ease  and  the  sweep  required.  And 
if  some  one  will  tell  me  how  Owen  Seaman  and 
those  people  get  the  rest  of  the  ease  and  the 
sweep  I'll  be  glad  to  put  it  in. 

One  further  experiment  of  the  same  sort  I 
made  with  the  English  Press  in  another  direc- 
tion and  met  again  with  failure.  If  there  is 
one  paper  in  the  world  for  which  I  have  respect 
and — if  I  may  say  it — an  affection,  it  is  the 
London  Spectator.  I  suppose  that  I  am  only 
one  of  thousands  and  thousands  of  people  who 
feel  that  way.  Why  under  the  circumstances 
the  Spectator  failed  to  publish  my  letter  I  can- 
not say.  I  wanted  no  money  for  it:  I  only 
wanted  the  honour  of  seeing  it  inserted  beside 
the  letter  written  from  the  Rectory,  Hops, 
Hants,  or  the  Shrubbery,  Potts,  Shrops, — I 
mean  from  one  of  those  places  where  the  read- 
ers of  the  Spectator  live.  I  thought  too  that 
my  letter  had  just  the  right  touch.  However, 
they  wouldn't  take  it:  something  wrong  with 
it  somewhere,  I  suppose.  This  is  it: 
145 


My  Discovery  of  England 


To  the  Editor, 

The  Spectator, 

London,  England. 
Dear  Sir, 

Your  correspondence  of  last  week  contained 
such  interesting  information  in  regard  to  the 
appearance  of  the  first  cowslip  in  Kensington 
Common  that  I  trust  that  I  may,  without  fa- 
tiguing your  readers  to  the  point  of  saturation, 
narrate  a  somewhat  similar  and  I  think,  sir,  an 
equally  interesting  experience  of  my  own. 
While  passing  through  Lambeth  Gardens  yes- 
terday towards  the  hour  of  dusk  I  observed  a 
crow  with  one  leg  sitting  beside  the  duck-pond 
and  apparently  lost  in  thought.  There  was 
no  doubt  that  the  bird  was  of  the  species  pulex 
hibiscus,  an  order  which  is  becoming  singularly 
rare  in  the  vicinity  of  the  metropolis.  Indeed, 
so  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  species  has  not 
been  seen  in  London  since  1680.  I  may  say 
that  on  recognising  the  bird  I  drew  as  near  as 
I  could,  keeping  myself  behind  the  shrubbery, 
but  the  pulex  hibiscus  which  apparently  caught 

146 


British  and  American  Press 

a  brief  glimpse  of  my  face  uttered  a  cry  of  dis- 
tress and  flew  away. 

I  am,  sir, 
Believe  me, 

yours,  sir, 

O.  Y.  Botherwithit. 
(Ret'd  Major  Burmese  Army.)_ 
Distressed  by  these  repeated  failures,  I  sank 
back  to  a  lower  level  of  English  literary  work, 
the  puzzle  department.  For  some  reason  or 
other  the  English  delight  in  puzzles.  It  is,  I 
think,  a  part  of  the  peculiar  school-boy  pedantry 
which  is  the  reverse  side  of  their  literary  gen- 
ius. I  speak  with  a  certain  bitterness  because 
in  puzzle  work  I  met  with  no  success  what- 
ever. My  solutions  were  never  acknowledged, 
never  paid  for,  in  fact  they  were  ignored.  But 
I  append  two  or  three  of  them  here,  with  apol- 
ogies to  the  editors  of  the  Strand  and  other 
papers  who  should  have  had  the  honour  of 
publishing  them  first. 


147 


My  Discovery  of  England 


Puzzle  I 

Can  you  fold  a  square  piece  of  paper  im 
such  a  way  that  with  a  single  fold  it  forms 
a  pentagon? 

My  Solution:  Yes,  if  I  knew  what  a  pen- 
tagon was. 

Puzzle  II 

A  and  B  agree. to  hold  a  walking  match 
across  an  open  meadow,  each  seeking  the 
shortest  line.  A,  walking  from  corner  to 
corner,  may  be  said  to  diangulate  the  hy- 
potenuse of  the  meadow.  B,  allowing 
for  a  slight  rise  in  the  ground,  walks  on  an 
obese  tabloid.  Which  wins? 

My  Solution:  Frankly,  I  don't  know. 

Puzzle  III 

(With  apologies  to  the  Strand.) 
'A  rope  is  passed  over  a  pulley.     It  has 
a  weight  at  one  end  and  a  monkey  at  the 
other.     There  is  the  same  length  of  rope 
on  either  side   and  equilibrium  is  main- 
tained.    The  rope  weighs  four  ounces  per 
148 


British  and  American  Press 

foot.  The  age  of  the  monkey  and  the 
age  of  the  monkey's  mother  together  total 
four  years.  The  weight  of  the  monkey 
is  as  many  pounds  as  the  monkey's  mother 
is  years  old.  The  monkey's  mother  was 
twice  as  old  as  the  monkey  was  when  the 
monkey's  mother  was  half  as  old  as  the 
monkey  will  be  when  the  monkey  is  three 
times  as  old  as  the  monkey's  mother  was 
when  the  monkey's  mother  was  three  times 
as  old  as  the  monkey.  The  weight  of  the 
rope  with  the  weight  at  the  end  was  half 
as  much  again  as  the  difference  in  weight 
between  the  weight  of  the  weight  and  the 
weight  of  the  monkey.  Now,  what  was 
the  length  of  the  rope? 

My  Solution:  I  should  think  it  would 
have  to  be  a  rope  of  a  fairly  good  length. 

In  only  one  department  of  English  journal- 
ism have  I  met  with  a  decided  measure  of  suc- 
cess,— I  refer  to  the  juvenile  competition  de- 
partment. This  is  a  sort  of  thing  to  which  the 
English  are  especially  addicted.  As  a  really 

149 


My  Discovery  of  England 


educated  nation  for  whom  good  literature  be- 
gins in  the  home  they  encourage  in  every  way 
literary  competitions  among  the  young  readers 
of  their  journals.  At  least  half  a  dozen  of  the 
well-known  London  periodicals  carry  on  this 
work.  The  prizes  run  all  the  way  from  one 
shilling  to  half  a  guinea  and  the  competitions 
are  generally  open  to  all  children  from  three  to 
six  years  of  age.  It  was  here  that  I  saw  my 
open  opportunity  and  seized  it.  I  swept  in 
prize  after  prize.  As  "Little  Agatha"  I  got 
four  shillings  for  the  best  description  of  Autumn 
in  two  lines,  and  one  shilling  for  guessing  cor- 
rectly the  missing  letters  in  BR-STOL,  SH-F- 
FIELD,  and  H-LL.  A  lot  of  the  competitors 
fell  down  on  H-LL.  I  got  six  shillings  for  giv- 
ing the  dates  of  the  Norman  Conquest, — 1492 
A.D.,  and  the  Crimean  War  of  1870.  In 
short,  the  thing  was  easy.  I  might  say  that  to 
enter  these  competitions  one  has  to  have  a  cer- 
tificate of  age  from  a  member  of  the  clergy. 
But  I  know  a  lot  of  them. 


VII 

BUSINESS  IN  ENGLAND. 
WANTED— MORE  PROFITEERS 


VIL— Business  in  England. 
Wanted — More  Profiteers 


IT  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  so  shrewd 
an  observer  as  I  am  could  not  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  situation  of  business  in  Eng- 
land.    Passing  through  the  factory  towns 
and  noticing  that  no  smoke  came  from  the  tall 
chimneys  and  that  the  doors  of  the  factories 
were  shut,  I  was  led  to  the  conclusion  that  they 
were  closed. 

Observing  that  the  streets  of  the  industrial 
centres  were  everywhere  filled  with  idle  men, 
I  gathered  that  they  were  unemployed:  and 
when  I  learned  that  the  moving  picture  houses 
were  full  to  the  doors  every  day  and  that  the 
concert  halls,  beer  gardens,  grand  opera,  and 
religious  concerts  were  crowded  to  suffocation, 
I  inferred  that  the  country  was  suffering  from 
an  unparalleled  depression.  This  diagnosis 
153 


V  •**_ 


My  Discovery  of  England 


turned  out  to  be  absolutely  correct.  It  has 
been  freely  estimated  that  at  the  time  I  refer 
to  almost  two  million  men  were  out  of  work. 
But  it  does  not  require  government  statistics 
to  prove  that  in  England  at  the  present  day 
everybody  seems  poor,  just  as  in  the  United 
States  everybody,  to  the  eye  of  the  visitor, 
seems  to  be  rich.  In  England  nobody  seems 
to  be  able  to  afford  anything:  in  the  United 
States  everybody  seems  to  be  able  to  afford 
everything.  In  England  nobody  smokes  cigars : 
in  America  everybody  does.  On  the  English 
railways  the  first  class  carriages  are  empty:  in 
the  United  States  the  "reserved  drawing- 
rooms"  are  full.  Poverty  no  doubt  is  only  a 
relative  matter:  but  a  man  whose  income  used 
to  be  £10,000  a  year  and  is  now  £5,000,  is  liv- 
ing in  "reduced  circumstances" :  he  feels  himself 
just  as  poor  as  the  man  whose  income  has  been 
cut  from  five  thousand  pounds  to  three,  or  from 
five  hundred  pounds  to  two.  They  are  all  in 
the  same  boat.  What  with  the  lowering  of 
dividends  and  the  raising  of  the  income  tax, 
the  closing  of  factories,  feeding  the  unemployed 
154 


Business  in  England 


and  trying  to  employ  the  unfed,  things  are  in  a 
bad  way. 

The  underlying  cause  is  plain  enough.  The 
economic  distress  that  the  world  suffers  now 
is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  the  war.  Ev- 
erybody knows  that.  But  where  the  people 
differ  is  in  regard  to  what  is  going  to  happen 
next,  and  what  we  must  do  about  it.  Here 
opinion  takes  a  variety  of  forms.  Some  people 
blame  it  on  the  German  mark:  by  permitting 
their  mark  to  fall,  the  Germans,  it  is  claimed, 
are  taking  away  all  the  business  from  England ; 
the  fall  of  the  mark,  by  allowing  the  Germans 
to  work  harder  and  eat  less  than  the  English, 
is  threatening  to  drive  the  English  out  of 
house  and  home:  if  the  mark  goes  on  falling 
still  further  the  Germans  will  thereby  outdo 
us  also  in  music,  literature  and  in  religion. 
What  has  got  to  be  done,  therefore,  is  to  force 
the  Germans  to  lift  the  mark  up  again,  and 
make  them  pay  up  their  indemnity. 

Another  more  popular  school  of  thought 
holds  to  an  entirely  contrary  opinion.  The 
whole  trouble,  they  say,  comes  from  the  sad 
155 


My  Discovery  of  England 


collapse  of  Germany.  These  unhappy  people, 
having  been  too  busy  for  four  years  in  destroy- 
ing valuable  property  in  France  and  Belgium 
to  pay  attention  to  their  home  affairs,  now  find 
themselves  collapsed :  it  is  our  first  duty  to  pick 
them  up  again.  The  English  should  therefore 
take  all  the  money  they  can  find  and  give  it  to 
the  Germans.  By  this  means  German  trade 
and  industry  will  revive  to  such  an  extent  that 
the  port  of  Hamburg  will  be  its  old  bright  self 
again  and  German  waiters  will  reappear  in  the 
London  hotels.  After  that  everything  will  be 
all  right. 

Speaking  with  all  the  modesty  of  an  out- 
sider and  a  transient  visitor,  I  give  it  as  my 
opinion  that  the  trouble  is  elsewhere.  The 
danger  of  industrial  collapse  in  England  does 
not  spring  from  what  is  happening  in  Germany 
but  from  what  is  happening  in  England  itself. 
England,  like  most  of  the  other  countries  in 
the  world,  is  suffering  from  the  over-extension 
of  government  and  the  decline  of  individual 
self-help.  For  six  generations  industry  in 
England  and  America  has  flourished  on  indi- 


Business  in  England 


vidual  effort  called  out  by  the  prospect  of  in- 
dividual gain.  Every  man  acquired  from  his 
boyhood  the  idea  that  he  must  look  after  him- 
self. Morally,  physically  and  financially  that 
was  the  recognised  way  of  getting  on.  The 
desire  to  make  a  fortune  was  regarded  as  a 
laudable  ambition,  a  proper  stimulus  to  effort. 
The  ugly  word  "profiteer"  had  not  yet  been 
coined.  There  was  no  income  tax  to  turn  a 
man's  pockets  inside  out  and  take  away  his  sav- 
ings. The  world  was  to  the  strong. 

Under  the  stimulus  of  this  the  wheels  of  in- 
dustry hummed.  Factories  covered  the  land. 
National  production  grew  to  a  colossal  size 
and  the  whole  outer  world  seemed  laid  under 
a  tribute  to  the  great  industry.  As  a  system  it 
was  far  from  perfect.  It  contained  in  itself 
all  kinds  of  gross  injustices,  demands  that  were 
too  great,  wages  that  were  too  small;  in  spite 
of  the  splendour  of  the  foreground,  poverty 
and  destitution  hovered  behind  the  scenes.  But 
such  as  it  was,  the  system  worked:  and  it  was 
the  only  one  that  we  knew. 

Or  turn  to  another  aspect  of  this  same  prin- 

157 


My  Discovery  of  England 


ciple  of  self-help.  The  way  to  acquire  knowl- 
edge in  the  early  days  was  to  buy  a  tallow  can- 
dle and  read  a  book  after  one's  day's  work,  as 
Benjamin  Franklin  read  or  Lincoln:  and  when 
the  soul  was  stimulated  to  it,  then  the  aspiring 
youth  must  save  money,  put  himself  to  college, 
live  on  nothing,  think  much,  and  in  the  course 
of  this  starvation  and  effort  become  a  learned 
man,  with  somehow  a  peculiar  moral  fibre  in 
him  not  easily  reproduced  to-day.  For  to-day 
the  candle  is  free  and  the  college  is  free  and  the 
student  has  a  "Union"  like  the  profiteer's  club 
and  a  swimming-bath  and  a  Drama  League  and 
a  coeducational  society  at  his  elbow  for  which 
he  buys  Beauty  Roses  at  five  dollars  a 
bunch. 

Or  turn  if  one  will  to  the  moral  side.  The 
older  way  of  being  good  was  by  much  prayer 
and  much  effort  of  one's  own  soul.  Now  it  is 
done  by  a  Board  of  Censors.  There  is  no 
need  to  fight  sin  by  the  power  of  the  spirit:  let 
the  Board  of  Censors  do  it.  They  together 
with  three  or  four  kinds  of  Commissioners  are 
supposed  to  keep  sin  at  arm's  length  and  to 

158 


Business  in  England 


supply  a  first  class  legislative  guarantee  of 
righteousness.  As  a  short  cut  to  morality  and 
as  a  way  of  saving  individual  effort  our  legis- 
latures are  turning  out  morality  legislation  by 
the  bucketful.  The  legislature  regulates  our 
drink,  it  begins  already  to  guard  us  against  the 
deadly  cigarette,  it  regulates  here  and  there 
the  length  of  our  skirts,  it  safeguards  our 
amusements  and  in  two  states  of  the  American 
Union  it  even  proposes  to  save  us  from  the 
teaching  of  the  Darwinian  Theory  of  evolution. 
The  ancient  prayer  "Lead  us  not  into  tempta- 
tion" is  passing  out  of  date.  The  way  to 
temptation  is  declared  closed  by  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment and  by  amendment  to  the  constitution  of 
the  United  States.  Yet  oddly  enough  the 
moral  tone  of  the  world  fails  to  respond.  The 
world  is  apparently  more  full  of  thugs,  hold-up 
men,  yeg-men,  bandits,  motor-thieves,  porch- 
climbers,  spotters,  spies  and  crooked  policemen 
than  it  ever  was;  till  it  almost  seems  that  the 
slow,  old-fashioned  method  of  an  effort  of  the 
individual  soul  may  be  needed  still  before  the 
world  is  made  good. 

159 


My  Discovery  of  England 


This  vast  new  system,  the  system  of  leaning 
on  the  government,  is  spreading  like  a  blight 
over  England  and  America,  and  everywhere  we 
suffer  from  it.  Government,  that  in  theory  rep- 
resents a  union  of  effort  and  a  saving  of  force, 
sprawls  like  an  octopus  over  the  land.  It  has 
become  like  a  dead  weight  upon  us.  Wherever 
it  touches  industry  it  cripples  it.  It  runs  rail- 
ways and  makes  a  heavy  deficit :  it  builds  ships 
and  loses  money  on  them :  it  operates  the  ships 
and  loses  more  money:  it  piles  up  taxes  to  fill 
the  vacuum  and  when  it  has  killed  employment, 
opens  a  bureau  of  unemployment  and  issues  a 
report  on  the  depression  of  industry. 

Now,  the  only  way  to  restore  prosperity  is 
to  give  back  again  to  the  individual  the  oppor- 
tunity to  make  money,  to  make  lots  of  it,  and 
when  he  has  got  it,  to  keep  it.  In  spite  of  all 
the  devastation  of  the  war  the  raw  assets  of  our 
globe  are  hardly  touched.  Here  and  there,  as 
in  parts  of  China  and  in  England  and  in  Bel- 
gium with  about  seven  hundred  people  to 
the  square  mile,  the  world  is  fairly  well  filled 
up.  There  is  standing  room  only.  But  there 
1 60 


Business  in  England 


are  vast  empty  spaces  still.  Mesopotamia 
alone  has  millions  of  acres  of  potential  wheat 
land  with  a  few  Arabs  squatting  on  it.  Canada 
could  absorb  easily  half  a  million  settlers  a  year 
for  a  generation  to  come.  The  most  fertile 
part  of  the  world,  the  valley  of  the  Amazon,  is 
still  untouched:  so  fertile  is  it  that  for  tens  of 
thousands  of  square  miles  it  is  choked  with 
trees,  a  mere  tangle  of  life,  defying  all  entry. 
The  idea  of  our  humanity  sadly  walking  the 
streets  of  Glasgow  or  sitting  mournfully  fishing 
on  the  piers  of  the  Hudson,  out  of  work,  would 
be  laughable  if  it  were  not  for  the  pathos  of  it. 
The  world  is  out  of  work  for  the  simple  rea- 
son that  the  world  has  killed  the  goose  that 
laid  the  golden  eggs  of  industry.  By  taxation, 
by  legislation,  by  popular  sentiment  all  over  the 
world,  there  has  been  a  disparagement  of  the 
capitalist.  And  all  over  the  world  capital  is 
frightened.  It  goes  and  hides  itself  in  the  form 
of  an  investment  in  a  victory  bond,  a  thing  that 
is  only  a  particular  name  for  a  debt,  with  no 
productive  effort  behind  it  and  indicating  only 
a  dead  weight  of  taxes.  There  capital  sits  like 
161 


My  Discovery  of  England 


a  bull-frog  hidden  behind  water-lilies,  refusing 
to  budge. 

Hence  the  way  to  restore  prosperity  is  not 
to  multiply  government  departments  and  gov- 
ernment expenditures,  nor  to  appoint  commis- 
sions and  to  pile  up  debts,  but  to  start  going 
again  the  machinery  of  bold  productive  effort. 
Take  off  all  the  excess  profits  taxes  and  the 
super-taxes  on  income  and  as  much  of  the  in- 
come tax  itself  as  can  be  done  by  a  wholesale 
dismissal  of  government  employes  and  then 
give  industry  a  mark  to  shoot  at.  What  is 
needed  now  is  not  the  multiplication  of  govern- 
ment reports,  but  corporate  industry,  the  forma- 
tion of  land  companies,  development  companies, 
irrigation  companies,  any  kind  of  corporation 
that  will  call  out  private  capital  from  its  hiding 
places,  offer  employment  to  millions  and  start 
the  wheels  moving  again.  If  the  promoters  of 
such  corporations  presently  earn  huge  fortunes 
for  themselves  society  is  none  the  worse:  and 
in  any  case,  humanity  being  what  it  is,  they  will 
hand  back  a  vast  part  of  what  they  have  ac- 
quired in  return  for  LL.D.  degrees,  or  bits  of 
162 


Business  in  England 


blue  ribbon,  or  companionships  of  the  Bath,  or 
whatever  kind  of  glass  bead  fits  the  fancy  of  the 
retired  millionaire. 

The  next  thing  to  be  done,  then,  is  to  "fire" 
the  government  officials  and  to  bring  back  the 
profiteer.  As  to  which  officials  are  to  be  fired 
first  it  doesn't  matter  much.  In  England  peo- 
ple have  been  greatly  perturbed  as  to  the  use  to 
be  made  of  such  instruments  as  the  "Geddes 
Axe" :  the  edge  of  the  axe  of  dismissal  seems 
so  terribly  sharp.  But  there  is  no  need  to 
worry.  If  the  edge  of  the  axe  is  too  sharp,  hit 
with  the  back  of  it. 

As  to  the  profiteer,  bring  him  back.  He  is 
really  just  the  same  person  who  a  few  years  ago 
was  called  a  Captain  of  Industry  and  an  Em- 
pire Builder  and  a  Nation  Maker.  It  is  the 
times  that  have  changed,  not  the  man.  He  is 
there  still,  just  as  greedy  and  rapacious  as  ever, 
but  no  greedier:  and  we  have  just  the  same 
social  need  of  his  greed  as  a  motive  power  in 
industry  as  we  ever  had,  and  indeed  a  worse 
need  than  before. 

We  need  him  not  only  in  business  but  in  the 
163 


3/;/  Discovery  of  England 


whole  setting  of  life,  or  if  not  him  personally, 
we  need  the  eager,  selfish,  but  reliant  spirit  of 
the  man  who  looks  after  himself  and  doesn't 
want  to  have  a  spoon-fed  education  and  a  gov- 
ernment job  alternating  with  a  government 
dole,  and  a  set  of  morals  framed  for  him  by  a 
Board  of  Censors.  Bring  back  the  profiteer: 
fetch  him  from  the  Riviera,  from  his  country- 
place  on  the  Hudson,  or  from  whatever  spot 
to  which  he  has  withdrawn  with  his  tin  box  full 
of  victory  bonds.  If  need  be,  go  and  pick  him 
out  of  the  penitentiary,  take  the  stripes  off  him 
and  tell  him  to  get  busy  again.  Show  him  the 
map  of  the  world  and  ask  him  to  pick  out  a 
few  likely  spots.  The  trained  greed  of  the  ras- 
cal will  find  them  in  a  moment.  Then  write 
him  out  a  concession  for  coal  in  Asia  Minor  or 
oil  in  the  Mackenzie  Basin  or  for  irrigation  in 
Mesopotamia.  The  ink  will  hardly  be  dry  on 
it  before  the  capital  will  begin  to  flow  in:  it 
will  come  from  all  kinds  of  places  whence  the 
government  could  never  coax  it  and  where  the 
tax-gatherer  could  never  find  it.  Only  promise 
that  it  is  not  going  to  be  taxed  out  of  existence 
164 


Business  in  England 


and  the  stream  of  capital  which  is  being  dried 
up  in  the  sands  of  government  mismanagement 
will  flow  into  the  hands  of  private  industry  like 
a  river  of  gold. 

And  incidentally,  when  the  profiteer  has  fin- 
ished his  work,  we  can  always  put  him  back 
into  the  penitentiary  if  we  like.  But  we  need 
him  just  now. 


VIII 

IS  PROHIBITION  COMING  TO 
ENGLAND? 


VIII. — Is  Prohibition  Coming  to 
England? 


IN  the  United  States  and  Canada  the  princi- 
pal topic  of  polite  conversation  is  now  pro- 
hibition.   At  every  dinner  party  the  serving 
of  the  cocktails  immediately  introduces  the 
subject:    the    rest  of  the  dinner  is  enlivened 
throughout  with  the  discussion  of  rum-runners, 
bootleggers,  storage  of  liquor  and  the  State 
constitution  of  New  Jersey.    Under  this  influ- 
ence all  social  and  conversational  values  are 
shifted  and  rearranged.     A  "scholarly"  man 
no  longer  means  a  man  who  can  talk  well  on 
literary  subjects  but  a  man  who  understands  the 
eighteenth  amendment  and  can  explain  the  legal 
difference  between  implementing  statutes  such 
as  the  Volstead  Act  and  the  underlying  state 
legislation.    A  "scientist"  (invaluable  in  these 
conversations)  is  a  man  who  can  make  clear  the 
169 


My  Discovery  of  England 


distinction  between  alcoholic  percentages  by 
bulk  and  by  weight.  And  a  "brilliant  engineer" 
means  a  man  who  explains  how  to  make  home- 
brewed beer  with  a  kick  in  it.  Similarly,  a 
"raconteur"  means  a  man  who  has  a  fund  of 
amusing  stories  about  "bootleggers"  and  an 
"interesting  traveller"  means  a  man  who  has 
been  to  Havana  and  can  explain  how  wet  it  is. 
Indeed,  the  whole  conception  of  travel  and  of 
interest  in  foreign  countries  is  now  altered:  as 
soon  as  any  one  mentions  that  he  has  been  in 
a  foreign  country,  all  the  company  ask  in  one 
breath,  "Is  it  dry?"  The  question  "How  is 
Samoa?"  or  "How  is  Turkey?"  or  "How  is 
British  Columbia?"  no  longer  refers  to  the  cli- 
mate or  natural  resources:  it  means  "Is  the 
place  dry?"  When  such  a  question  is  asked 
and  the  answer  is  "It's  wet,"  there  is  a  deep 
groan  all  around  the  table. 

I  understand  that  when  the  recent  disarma- 
ment conference  met  at  Washington  just  as  the 
members  were  going  to  sit  down  at  the  table 
Monsieur  Briand  said  to  President  Harding, 
"How  dry  is  the  United  States,  anyway?"  And 

170 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

the  whole  assembly  talked  about  it  for  half  an 
hour.  That  was  why  the  first  newspaper  bulle- 
tins merely  said,  "Conference  exchanges  cre- 
dentials." 

As  a  discoverer  of  England  I  therefore  made 
it  one  of  my  chief  cares  to  try  to  obtain  ac- 
curate information  of  this  topic.  I  was  well 
aware  that  immediately  on  my  return  to  Can- 
ada the  first  question  I  would  be  asked  would 
be  "Is  England  going  dry?"  I  realised  that  in 
any  report  I  might  make  to  the  National  Geo- 
graphical Society  or  to  the  Political  Science  As- 
sociation, the  members  of  these  bodies,  being 
scholars,  would  want  accurate  information 
about  the  price  of  whiskey,  the  percentage  of 
alcohol,  and  the  hours  of  opening  and  closing 
the  saloons. 

My  first  impression  on  the  subject  was,  I 
must  say,  one  of  severe  moral  shock.  Landing 
in  England  after  spending  the  summer  in  On- 
tario, it  seemed  a  terrible  thing  to  see  people 
openly  drinking  on  an  English  train.  On  an 
Ontario  train,  as  everybody  knows,  there  is  no 
way  of  taking  a  drink  except  by  climbing  up  on 
171 


My  Discovery  of  England 


the  roof,  lying  flat  on  one's  stomach,  and  taking 
a  suck  out  of  a  flask.  But  in  England  in  any 
dining  car  one  actually  sees  a  waiter  approach  a 
person  dining  and  say,  "Beer,  sir,  or  wine?" 
This  is  done  in  broad  daylight  with  no  apparent 
sense  of  criminality  or  moral  shame.  Appalling 
though  it  sounds,  bottled  ale  is  openly  sold  on 
the  trains  at  twenty-five  cents  a  bottle  and  dry 
sherry  at  eighteen  cents  a  glass. 

When  I  first  saw  this  I  expected  to  see  the 
waiter  arrested  on  the  spot.  I  looked  around 
to  see  if  there  were  any  "spotters,"  detectives, 
or  secret  service  men  on  the  train.  I  antici- 
pated that  the  train  conductor  would  appear 
and  throw  the  waiter  off  the  car.  But  then  I 
realised  that  I  was  in  England  and  that  in 
the  British  Isles  they  still  tolerate  the  consump- 
tion of  alcohol.  Indeed,  I  doubt  if  they  are 
even  aware  that  they  are  "consuming  alcohol." 
Their  impression  is  that  they  are  drinking  beer. 

At  the  beginning  of  my  discussion  I  will 
therefore  preface  a  few  exact  facts  and  statis- 
tics for  the  use  of  geographical  societies, 
learned  bodies  and  government  commissions. 
172 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 


quantity  of  beer  consumed  in  England  in  a 
given  period  is  about  200,000,000  gallons.  The 
life  of  a  bottle  of  Scotch  whiskey  is  seven  sec- 
onds. The  number  of  public  houses,  or  "pubs," 
in  the  English  countryside  is  one  to  every  half 
mile.  The  percentage  of  the  working  classes 
drinking  beer  is  125:  the  percentage  of  the 
class  without  work  drinking  beer  is  200. 

Statistics  like  these  do  not,  however,  give  a 
final  answer  to  the  question,  "Is  prohibition 
coming  to  England?"  They  merely  show  that 
it  is  not  there  now.  The  question  itself  will  be 
answered  in  as  many  different  ways  as  there  are 
different  kinds  of  people.  Any  prohibitionist 
will  tell  you  that  the  coming  of  prohibition  to 
England  is  as  certain  as  the  coming  eclipse  of 
the  sun.  But  this  is  always  so.  It  is  in  human 
nature  that  people  are  impressed  by  the  cause 
they  work  in.  I  once  knew  a  minister  of  the 
Scotch  Church  who  took  a  voyage  round  the 
world:  he  said  that  the  thing  that  impressed 
him  most  was  the  growth  of  Presbyter!  anism  in 
Japan.  No  doubt  it  did.  When  the  Orillia 
lacrosse  team  took  their  trip  to  Australia,  they 

173 


My  Discovery  of  England 


said  on  their  return  that  lacrosse  was  spreading 
all  over  the  world.  In  the  same  way  there  is 
said  to  be  a  spread  all  over  the  world  of  Chris- 
tian Science,  proportional  representation,  mili- 
tarism, peace  sentiment,  barbarism,  altruism, 
psychoanalysis  and  death  from  wood  alcohol. 
They  are  what  are  called  world  movements. 

My  own  judgment  in  regard  to  prohibition 
in  the  British  Isles  is  this:  In  Scotland,  prohi- 
bition is  not  coming :  if  anything,  it  is  going.  In 
Ireland,  prohibition  will  only  be  introduced 
when  they  have  run  out  of  other  forms  of  trou- 
ble. But  in  England  I  think  that  prohibition 
could  easily  come  unless  the  English  people 
realise  where  they  are  drifting  and  turn  back. 
They  are  in  the  early  stage  of  the  movement 
already. 

Turning  first  to  Scotland,  there  is  no  fear,  I 
say,  that  prohibition  will  be  adopted  there :  and 
this  from  the  simple  reason  that  the  Scotch  do 
not  drink.  I  have  elsewhere  alluded  to  the 
extraordinary  misapprehension  that  exists  in 
regard  to  the  Scotch  people  and  their  sense  of 
humour.  I  find  a  similar  popular  error  in  rc- 
174 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

gard  to  the  use  of  whiskey  by  the  Scotch.  Be- 
cause they  manufacture  the  best  whiskey  in  the 
world,  the  Scotch,  in  popular  fancy,  are  often 
thought  to  be  addicted  to  the  drinking  of  it. 
This  is  purely  a  delusion.  During  the  whole  of 
two  or  three  pleasant  weeks  spent  in  lecturing 
in  Scotland,  I  never  on  any  occasion  saw  whis- 
ke.y  made  use  of  as  a  beverage.  I  have  seen 
people  take  it,  of  course,  as  a  medicine,  or  as  a 
precaution,  or  as  a  wise  offset  against  a  rather 
treacherous  climate;  but  as  a  beverage,  never. 
The  manner  and  circumstance  of  their  offer- 
ing whiskey  to  a  stranger  amply  illustrates  their 
point  of  view  towards  it.  Thus  at  my  first  lec- 
ture in  Glasgow  where  I  was  to  appear  before 
a  large  and  fashionable  audience,  the  chairman 
said  to  me  in  the  committee  room  that  he  was 
afraid 'that  there  might  be  a  draft  on  the  plat- 
form. Here  was  a  serious  matter.  For  a  lec- 
turer who  has  to  earn  his  living  by  his  occupa- 
tion, a  draft  on  the  platform  is  not  a  thing  to 
be  disregarded.  It  might  kill  him.  Nor  is  it 
altogether  safe  for  the  chairman  himself,  a  man 
already  in  middle  life,  to  be  exposed  to  a  cur- 


My  Discovery  of  England 


rent  of  cold  air.  In  this  case,  therefore,  the 
chairman  suggested  that  he  thought  it  might 
be  "prudent" — that  was  his  word,  "prudent" — 
if  I  should  take  a  small  drop  of  whiskey  before 
encountering  the  draft.  In  return  I  told  him 
that  I  could  not  think  of  his  accompanying  me 
to  the  platform  unless  he  would  let  me  insist 
on  his  taking  a  very  reasonable  precaution. 
Whiskey  taken  on  these  terms  not  only  seems 
like  a  duty  but  it  tastes  better. 

In  the  same  way  I  find  that  in  Scotland  it  is 
very  often  necessary  to  take  something  to  drink 
on  purely  meteorological  grounds.  The  weather 
simply  cannot  be  trusted.  A  man  might  find 
that  on  "going  out  into  the  weather"  he  is 
overwhelmed  by  a  heavy  fog  or  an  avalanche  of 
snow  or  a  driving  storm  of  rain.  In  such  a 
case  a  mere  drop  of  whiskey  might  save  his 
life.  It  would  be  folly  not  to  take  it.  Again, — 
"coming  in  out  of  the  weather"  is  a  thing  not 
to  be  trifled  with.  A  person  coming  in  unpre- 
pared and  unprotected  might  be  seized  with 
angina  pectoris  or  appendicitis  and  die  upon  the 
spot.  No  reasonable  person  would  refuse  the 

176 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

simple  precaution  of  taking  a  small  drop  im- 
mediately after  his  entry. 

I  find  that,  classified  altogether,  there  are 
seventeen  reasons  advanced  in  Scotland  for 
taking  whiskey.  They  run  as  follows :  Reason 
one,  because  it  is  raining;  Two,  because  it  is 
not  raining;  Three,  because  you  are  just  going 
out  into  the  weather;  Four,  because  you  have 
just  come  in  from  the  weather;  Five, — no,  I 
forget  the  ones  that  come  after  that.  But  I 
remember  that  reason  number  seventeen  is  "be- 
cause it  canna  do  ye  any  harm."  On  the  whole, 
reason  seventeen  is  the  best. 

Put  in  other  words  this  means  that  the  Scotch 
make  use  of  whiskey  with  dignity  and  without 
shame :  and  they  never  call  it  alcohol. 

In  England  the  case  is  different.  Already 
the  English  are  showing  the  first  signs  that  in- 
dicate the1  possible  approach  of  prohibition. 
Already  all  over  England  there  are  weird  regu- 
lations about  the  closing  hours  of  the  public 
houses.  They  open  and  close  according  to  the 
varying  regulations  of  the  municipality.  In 
some  places  they  open  at  six  in  the  morning, 
177 


My  Discovery  of  England 


close  down  for  an  hour  from  nine  till  ten,  open 
then  till  noon,  shut  for  ten  minutes,  and  so  on ; 
in  some  places  they  are  open  in  the  morning 
and  closed  in  the  evening;  in  other  places  they 
are  open  in  the  evening  and  closed  in  the  morn- 
ing. The  ancient  idea  was  that  a  wayside  pub- 
lic house  was  a  place  of  sustenance  and  comfort, 
a  human  need  that  might  be  wanted  any  hour. 
It  was  in  the  same  class  with  the  life  boat  or 
the  emergency  ambulance.  Under  the  old  com- 
mon law  the  innkeeper  must  supply  meat  and 
drink  at  any  hour.  If  he  was  asleep  the  travel- 
ler might  wake  him.  And  in  those  days  meat 
and  drink  were  regarded  in  the  same  light. 
Note  how  great  the  change  is.  In  modern  life 
in  England  there  is  nothing  that  you  dare  wake 
up  a  man  for  except  gasoline.  The  mere  fact 
that  you  need  a  drink  is  no  longer  held  to  en- 
title you  to  break  his  rest. 

In  London  especially  one  feels  the  full  force 
of  the  "closing"  regulations.  The  bars  open 
and  shut  at  intervals  like  daisies  blinking  at-  the 
sun.  And  like  the  flowers  at  evening  they  close 
their  petals  with  the  darkness.  In  London  they 

178 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

have  already  adopted  the  deadly  phrases  of  the 
prohibitionist,  such  as  "alcohol"  and  "Kquor 
traffic"  and  so  on:  and  already  the  "sale  of 
spirits"  stops  absolutely  at  about  eleven  o'clock 
at  night. 

This  means  that  after  theatre  hours  London 
is  a  "city  of  dreadful  night."  The  people  from 
the  theatre  scuttle  to  their  homes.  The  lights 
are  extinguished  in  the  windows.  The  streets 
darken.  Only  a  belated  taxi  still  moves.  At 
midnight  the  place  is  deserted.  At  i  A.M.,  the 
lingering  footfalls  echo  in  the  empty  street. 
Here  and  there  a  restaurant  in  a  fashionable 
street  makes  a  poor  pretence  of  keeping  open 
for  after  theatre  suppers.  Odd  people,  the 
shivering  wrecks  of  theatre  parties,  are  huddled 
here  and  there.  A  gloomy  waiter  lays  a  sardine 
on  the  table.  The  guests  charge  their  glasses 
with  Perrier  Water,  Lithia  Water,  Citrate  of 
Magnesia,  or  Bromo  Seltzer.  They  eat  the  sar- 
dine and  vanish  into  the  night.  Not  even  Osh- 
kosh,  Wisconsin,  or  Middlebury,  Vermont,  is 
quieter  than  is  the  night  life  of  London.  It  may 
no  doubt  seem  a  wise  thing  to  go  to  bed  early. 
179 


My  Discovery  of  England 


But  it  is  a  terrible  thing  to  go  to  bed  early  by 
Act  of  Parliament. 

All  of  which  means  that  the  people  of  Eng- 
land are  not  facing  the  prohibition  question 
fairly  and  squarely.  If  they  see  no  harm  in 
"consuming  alcohol"  they  ought  to  say  so  and 
let  their  code  of  regulations  reflect  the  fact. 
But  the  "closing"  and  "regulating"  and  "squeez- 
ing" of  the  "liquor  traffic",  without  any  out- 
spoken protest,  means  letting  the  whole  case  go 
by  default.  Under  these  circumstances  an  or- 
ganised and  active  minority  can  always  win  and 
impose  its  will  upon  the  crowd. 

When  I  was  in  England  I  amused  myself  one 
day  by  writing  an  imaginary  picture  of  what 
England  will  be  like  when  the  last  stage  is 
reached  and  London  goes  the  way  of  New  York 
and  Chicago.  I  cast  it  in  the  form  of  a  letter 
from  an  American  prohibitionist  in  which  he 
describes  the  final  triumph  of  prohibition  in 
England.  With  the  permission  of  the  reader 
I  reproduce  it  here: 


1 80 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

THE  ADVENT  OF  PROHIBITION  IN  ENGLAND 

'As  written  in  the  correspondence  of 
an  American  visitor 

How  glad  I  am  that  I  have  lived  to  see  this 
wonderful  reform  of  prohibition  at  last  accom- 
plished in  England.  There  is  something  so 
difficult  about  the  British,  so  stolid,  so  hard  to 
move. 

We  tried  everything  in  the  great  campaign 
that  we  made,  and  for  ever  so  long  it  didn't 
seem  to  work.  We  had  processions,  just  as  we 
did  at  home  in  America,  with  great  banners 
carried  round  bearing  the  inscription :  "Do  you 
want  to  save  the  boy?"  But  these  people 
looked  on  and  said,  "Boy?  Boy?  What  boy?" 
Our  workers  were  almost  disheartened.  "Oh, 
sir,"  said  one  of  them,  an  ex-barkeeper  from 
Oklahoma,  "it  does  seem  so  hard  that  we  have 
total  prohibition  in  the  States  and  here  they  can 
get  all  the  drink  they  want."  And  the  good 
fellow  broke  down  and  sobbed. 

But  at  last  it  has  come.  After  the  most  ter- 
rific efforts  we  managed  to  get  this  nation  stam- 
181 


My  Discovery  of  England 


peded,  and  for  more  than  a  month  now  Eng- 
land has  been  dry.  I  wish  you  could  have 
witnessed  the  scenes,  just  like  what  we  saw  at 
home  in  America,  when  it  was  known  that  the 
bill  had  passed.  The  members  of  the  House  of 
Lords  all  stood  up  on  their  seats  and  yelled, 
"Rah!  Rah!  Rah!  Who's  bone  dry?  We 
are!"  And  the  brewers  and  innkeepers  were 
emptying  their  barrels  of  beer  into  the  Thames 
just  as  at  St.  Louis  they  emptied  the  beer  into 
the  Mississippi. 

I  can't  tell  you  with  what  pleasure  I  watched 
a  group  of  members  of  the  Athenaeum  Club  sit- 
ting on  the  bank  of  the  Thames  and  opening 
bottles  of  champagne  and  pouring  them  into 
the  river.  "To  think,"  said  one  of  them  to  me, 
"that  there  was  a  time  when  I  used  to  lap  up 
a  couple  of  quarts  of  this  terrible  stuff  every 
evening."  I  got  him  to  give  me  a  few  bottles 
as  a  souvenir,  and  I  got  some  more  souvenirs, 
whiskey  and  liqueurs,  when  the  members  of  the 
Beefsteak  Club  were  emptying  out  their  cellars 
into  Green  Street;  so  when  you  come  over,  I 
182 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

shall  still  be  able,  of  course,  to  give  you  a 
drink. 

We  have,  as  I  said,  been  bone  dry  only  a 
month,  and  yet  already  we  are  getting  the  same 
splendid  results  as  in  America.  All  the  big 
dinners  are  now  as  refined  and  as  elevating  and 
the  dinner  speeches  as  long  and  as  informal  as 
they  are  in  New  York  or  Toronto.  The  other 
night  at  a  dinner  at  the  White  Friars  Club  I 
heard  Sir  Owen  Seaman  speaking,  not  in  that 
light  futile  way  that  he  used  to  have,  but  quite 
differently.  He  talked  for  over  an  hour  and  a 
half  on  the  State  ownership  of  the  Chinese  Rail- 
way System,  and  I  almost  fancied  myself  back 
in  Boston. 

And  the  working  class  too.  It  is  just  wonder- 
ful how  prohibition  has  increased  their  effi- 
ciency. In  the  old  days  they  used  to  drop  their 
work  the  moment  the  hour  struck.  Now  they 
simply  refuse  to  do  so.  I  noticed  yesterday  a 
foreman  in  charge  of  a  building  operation  vainly 
trying  to  call  the  bricklayers  down.  "Come, 
come,  gentlemen,"  he  shouted,  "I  must  insist  on 
183 


My  Discovery  of  England 


your  stopping  for  the  night."     But  they  just 
went  on  laying  bricks  faster  than  ever. 

Of  course,  as  yet  there  are  a  few  slight  dif- 
ficulties and  deficiencies,  just  as  there  are  with 
us  in  America.  We  have  had  the  same  trouble 
with  wood-alcohol  (they  call  it  methylated 
spirit  here),  with  the  same  deplorable  results. 
On  some  days  the  list  of  deaths  is  very  serious, 
and  in  some  cases  we  are  losing  men  we  can 
hardly  spare.  A  great  many  of  our  leading 
actors — in  fact,  most  of  them — are  dead.  And 
there  has  been  a  heavy  loss,  too,  among  the 
literary  class  and  in  the  legal  profession. 

There  was  a  very  painful  scene  last  week  at 
the  dinner  of  the  Benchers  of  Gray's  Inn.  It 
seems  that  one  of  the  chief  justices  had  under- 
taken to  make  home  brew  for  the  Benchers,  just 
as  the  people  do  on  our  side  of  the  water.  He 
got  one  of  the  waiters  to  fetch  him  some  hops 
and  three  raw  potatoes,  a  packet  of  yeast  and 
some  boiling  water.  In  the  end,  four  of  the 
Benchers  were  carried  out  dead.  But  they  are 
going  to  give  them  a  public  funeral  in  the 
Abbey. 

184 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

I  regret  to  say  that  the  death  list  in  the  Royal 
Navy  is  very  heavy.  Some  of  the  best  sailors 
are  gone,  and  it  is  very  difficult  to  keep  ad- 
mirals. But  I  have  tried  to  explain  to  the  peo- 
ple here  that  these  are  merely  the  things  that 
one  must  expect,  and  that,  with  a  little  patience, 
they  will  have  bone-dry  admirals  and  bone-dry 
statesmen  just  as  good  as  the  wet  ones.  Even 
the  clergy  can  be  dried  up  with  firmness  and 
perseverance. 

There  was  also  a  slight  sensation  here  when 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  brought  in  his 
first  appropriation  for  maintaining  prohibition. 
From  our  point  of  view  in  America,  it  was 
modest  enough.  But  these  people  are  not  used 
to  it.  The  Chancellor  merely  asked  for  ten 
million  pounds  a  month  to  begin  on;  he  ex- 
plained that  his  task  was  heavy;  he  has  to  po- 
lice, not  only  the  entire  coast,  but  also  the  in- 
terior; for  the  Grampian  Hills  of  Scotland 
alone  he  asked  a  million.  There  was  a  good 
deal  of  questioning  in  the  House  over  these 
figures.  The  Chancellor  was  asked  if  he  in- 
tended to  keep  a  hired  spy  at  every  street  corner 
185 


My  Discovery  of  England 


in  London.  He  answered,  "No,  only  on  every 
other  street."  He  added  also  that  every  spy 
must  wear  a  brass  collar  with  his  number. 

I  must  admit  further,  and  I  am  sorry  to  have 
to  tell  you  this,  that  now  we  have  prohibition 
it  is  becoming  increasingly  difficult  to  get  a 
drink.  In  fact,  sometimes,  especially  in  the 
very  early  morning,  it  is  most  inconvenient  and 
almost  impossible.  The  public  houses  being 
closed,  it  is  necessary  to  go  into  a  drug  store — 
just  as  it  is  with  us — and  lean  up  against  the 
counter  and  make  a  gurgling  sound  like  apo- 
plexy. One  often  sees  these  apoplexy  cases 
lined  up  four  deep. 

But  the  people  are  finding  substitutes,  just  as 
they  do  with  us.  There  is  a  tremendous  run  on 
patent  medicines,  perfume,  glue  and  nitric  acid. 
It  has  been  found  that  Shears'  soap  contains  al- 
cohol, and  one  sees  people  everywhere  eating 
cakes  of  it.  The  upper  classes  have  taken  to 
chewing  tobacco  very  considerably,  and  the  use 
of  opium  in  the  House  of  Lords  has  very 
greatly  increased. 

But  I  don't  want  you  to  think  that  if  you 
1*6 


Is  Prohibition  Coming  to  England? 

come  over  here  to  see  me,  your  private  life  will 
be  in  any  way  impaired  or  curtailed.  I  am  glad 
to  say  that  I  have  plenty  of  rich  connections 
whose  cellars  are  very  amply  stocked.  The 
Duke  of  Blank  is  said  to  have  5,000  cases  of 
Scotch  whiskey,  and  I  have  managed  to  get  a 
card  of  introduction  to  his  butler.  In  fact  you 
will  find  that,  just  as  with  us  in  America,  the 
benefit  of  prohibition  is  intended  to  fall  on  the 
poorer  classes.  There  is  no  desire  to  interfere 
with  the  rich. 


IX 
"WE  HAVE  WITH  US  TO-NIGHT" 


IX.— "We  Have  With  Us 
To-night' 

NOT  only  during  my  tour  in  England  but 
for  many  years  past  it  has  been  my  lot 
to  speak  and  to  lecture  in  all  sorts  of 
places,  under  all  sorts  of  circumstances 
and  before  all  sorts  of  audiences.    I  say  this, 
not  in  boastfulness,  but  in  sorrow.     Indeed,  I 
only  mention  it  to  establish  the  fact  that  when 
I  talk  of  lecturers  and  speakers,  I  talk  of  what 
I  know. 

Few  people  realise  how  arduous  and  how 
disagreeable  public  lecturing  is.  The  public  sees 
the  lecturer  step  out  on  to  the  platform  in  his 
little  white  waistcoat  and  his  long  tailed  coat 
and  with  a  false  air  of  a  conjurer  about  him, 
and  they  think  him  happy.  After  about  ten 
minutes  of  his  talk  they  are  tired  of  him.  Most 
people  tire  of  a  lecture  in  ten  minutes;  clever 
191 


My  Discovery  of  England 


people  can  do  it  in  five.  Sensible  people  never 
go  to  lectures  at  all.  But  the  people  who  do  go 
to  a  lecture  and  who  get  tired  of  it,  presently 
hold  it  as  a  sort  of  a  grudge  against  the  lec- 
turer personally.  In  reality  his  sufferings  are 
worse  than  theirs. 

For  my  own  part  I  always  try  to  appear  as 
happy  as  possible  while  I  am  lecturing.  I  take 
this  to  be  part  of  the  trade  of  anybody  labelled 
a  humourist  and  paid  as  such.  I  have  no  sym- 
pathy whatever  with  the  idea  that  a  humourist 
ought  to  be  a  lugubrious  person  with  a  face 
stamped  with  melancholy.  This  is  a  cheap  and 
elementary  effect  belonging  to  the  level  of  a 
circus  clown.  The  image  of  "laughter  shaking 
both  his  sides"  is  the  truer  picture  of  comedy. 
Therefore,  I  say,  I  always  try  to  appear  cheer- 
ful at  my  lectures  and  even  to  laugh  at  my  own 
jokes.  Oddly  enough  this  arouses  a  kind  of 
resentment  in  some  of  the  audience.  "Well,  I 
will  say,"  said  a  stern-looking  woman  who  spoke 
to  me  after  one  of  my  lectures,  "you  certainly 
do  seem  to  enjoy  your  own  fun."  "Madam," 
I  answered,  "if  I  didn't,  who  would?"  But  in 
192 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

reality  the  whole  business  of  being  a  public  lec- 
turer is  one  long  variation  of  boredom  and 
fatigue.  So  I  propose  to  set  down  here  some  of 
the  many  trials  which  the  lecturer  has  to  bear. 

The  first  of  the  troubles  which  any  one  who 
begins  giving  public  lectures  meets  at  the  very 
outset  is  the  fact  that  the  audience  won't  come 
to  hear  him.  This  happens  invariably  and  con- 
stantly, and  not  through  any  fault  or  shortcom- 
ing of  the  speaker. 

I  don't  say  that  this  happened  very  often  to 
me  in  my  tour  in  England.  In  nearly  all  cases 
I  had  crowded  audiences:  by  dividing  up  the 
money  that  I  received  by  the  average  number  of 
people  present  to  hear  me  I  have  calculated  that 
they  paid  thirteen  cents  each.  And  my  lectures 
are  evidently  worth  thirteen  cents.  But  at  home 
in  Canada  I  have  very  often  tried  the  fatal  ex- 
periment of  lecturing  for  nothing:  and  in  that 
case  the  audience  simply  won't  come.  A  man 
will  turn  out  at  night  when  he  knows  he  is  going 
to  hear  a  first  class  thirteen  cent  lecture;  but 
when  the  thing  is  given  for  nothing,  why  go  to 
it? 

193 


My  Discovery  of  England 


The  city  in  which  I  live  is  overrun  with  little 
societies,  clubs  and  associations,  always  wanting 
to  be  addressed.  So  at  least  it  is  in  appearance. 
In  reality  the  societies  are  composed  of  presi- 
dents, secretaries  and  officials,  who  want  the 
conspicuousness  of  office,  and  a  large  list  of 
other  members  who  won't  come  to  the  meetings. 
For  such  an  association,  the  invited  speaker  who 
is  to  lecture  for  nothing  prepares  his  lecture  on 
"Indo-Germanic  Factors  in  the  Current  of  His- 
tory." If  he  is  a  professor,  he  takes  all  the 
winter  at  it.  You  may  drop  in  at  his  house  at 
any  time  and  his  wife  will  tell  you  that  he  is 
"upstairs  working  on  his  lecture."  If  he  comes 
down  at  all  it  is  in  carpet  slippers  and  dressing 
gown.  His  mental  vision  of  his  meeting  is  that 
of  a  huge  gathering  of  keen  people  with  Indo- 
Germanic  faces,  hanging  upon  every  word. 

Then  comes  the  fated  night.  There  are 
seventeen  people  present.  The  lecturer  refuses 
to  count  them.  He  refers  to  them  afterwards 
as  "about  a  hundred."  To  this  group  he  reads 
his  paper  on  the  Indo-Germanic  Factor.  It 
194 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

takes  him  two  hours.  When  he  is  over  the 
chairman  invites  discussion.  There  is  no  dis- 
cussion. The  audience  is  willing  to  let  the  Indo- 
Germanic  factors  go  unchallenged.  Then  the 
chairman  makes  this  speech.  He  says : 

"I  am  very  sorry  indeed  that  we  should  have 
had  such  a  very  poor  'turn  out'  to-night.  I  am 
sure  that  the  members  who  were  not  here  have 
missed  a  real  treat  in  the  delightful  paper  that 
we  have  listened  to.  I  want  to  assure  the  lec- 
turer that  if  he  comes  to  the  Owl's  Club  again 
we  can  guarantee  him  next  time  a  capacity  audi- 
ence. And  will  any  members,  please,  who 
haven't  paid  their  dollar  this  winter,  pay  it 
either  to  me  or  to  Mr.  Sibley  as  they  pass  out." 

I  have  heard  this  speech  (in  the  years  when 
I  have  had  to  listen  to  it)  so  many  times  that 
I  know  it  by  heart.  I  have  made  the  acquain- 
tance of  the  Owl's  Club  under  so  many  names 
that  I  recognise  it  at  once.  I  am  aware  that 
its  members  refuse  to  turn  out  in  cold  weather; 
that  they  do  not  turn  out  in  wet  weather;  that 
when  the  weather  is  really  fine,  it  is  impossible 

195 


My  Discovery  of  England 


to  get  them  together;  that  the  slightest  counter- 
attraction, — a  hockey  match,  a  sacred  concert, 
— goes  to  their  heads  at  once. 

There  was  a  time  when  I  was  the  newly  ap- 
pointed occupant  of  a  college  chair  and  had  to 
address  the  Owl's  Club.  It  is  a  penalty  that  all 
new  professors  pay;  and  the  Owls  batten  upon 
them  like  bats.  It  is  one  of  the  compensations 
of  age  that  I  am  free  of  the  Owl's  Club  forever. 
But  in  the  days  when  I  still  had  to  address  them, 
I  used  to  take  it  out  of  the  Owls  in  a  speech, 
delivered,  in  imagination  only  and  not  out  loud, 
to  the  assembled  meeting  of  the  seventeen  Owls, 
after  the  chairman  had  made  his  concluding 
remarks.  It  ran  as  follows: 

"Gentlemen — if  you  are  such,  which  I  doubt. 
I  realise  that  the  paper  which  I  have  read  on 
"Was  Hegel  a  deist?"  has  been  an  error.  I 
spent  all  the  winter  on  it  and  now  I  realise  that 
not  one  of  you  pups  know  who  Hegel  was  or 
what  a  deist  is.  Never  mind.  It  is  over  now, 
and  I  am  glad.  But  just  let  me  say  this,  only 
this,  which  won't  keep  you  a  minute.  Your 
chairman  has  been  good  enough  to  say  that  if 

196 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

I  come  again  you  will  get  together  a  capacity 
audience  to  hear  me.  Let  me  tell  you  that  if 
your  society  waits  for  its  next  meeting  till  I 
come  to  address  you  again,  you  will  wait  in- 
deed. In  fact,  gentlemen — I  say  it  very 
frankly — it  will  be  in  another  world." 

But  I  pass  over  the  audience.  Suppose  there 
is  a  real  audience,  and  suppose  them  all  duly 
gathered  together.  Then  it  becomes  the  busi- 
ness of  that  gloomy  gentleman — facetiously  re- 
ferred to  in  the  newspaper  reports  as  the 
"genial  chairman" — to  put  the  lecturer  to  the 
bad.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  he  can  do  so. 
Some  chairmen,  indeed,  develop  a  great  gift  for 
it.  Here  are  one  or  two  examples  from  my  own 
experience : 

"Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  said  the  chairman 
of  a  society  in  a  little  country  town  in  Western 
Ontario,  to  which  I  had  come  as  a  paid  (a  very 
humbly  paid)  lecturer,  "we  have  with  us  to- 
night a  gentleman"  (here  he  made  an  attempt 
to  read  my  name  on  a  card,  failed  to  read  it 
and  put  the  card  back  in  his  pocket) — "a  gen- 
tleman who  is  to  lecture  to  us  on"  (here  he 
197 


My  Discovery  of  England 


looked  at  his  card  again) — "on  Ancient — An- 
cient,— I  don't  very  well  sec  what  it  is — Ancient 
— Britain?  Thank  you,  on  Ancient  Britain. 
Now,  this  is  the  first  of  our  series  of  lectures 
for  this  winter.  The  last  series,  as  you  all 
know,  was  not  a  success.  In  fact,  we  came  out 
at  the  end  of  the  year  with  a  deficit.  So  this 
year  we  are  starting  a  new  line  and  trying  the 
experiment  of  cheaper  talent." 

Here  the  chairman  gracefully  waved  his 
hand  toward  me  and  there  was  a  certain  amount 
of  applause.  "Before  I  sit  down,"  the  chair- 
man added,  "I'd  like  to  say  that  I  am  sorry  to 
see  such  a  poor  turn-out  to-night  and  to  ask  any 
of  the  members  who  haven't  paid  their  dollar 
to  pay  it  either  to  me  or  to  Mr.  Sibley  as  they 
pass  out." 

Let  anybody  who  knows  the  discomfiture  of 
coming  out  before  an  audience  on  any  terms, 
judge  how  it  feels  to  crawl  out  in  front  of  them 
labelled  cheaper  talent. 

Another  charming  way  in  which  the  chairman 
endeavours  to  put  both  the  speaker  for  the  eve- 
ning and  the  audience  into  an  entirely  good 
198 


" We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

humour,  is  by  reading  out  letters  of  regret  from 
persons  unable  to  be  present.  This,  of  course, 
is  only  for  grand  occasions  when  the  speaker 
has  been  invited  to  come  under  very  special 
auspices.  It  was  my  fate,  not  long  ago,  to  "ap- 
pear" (this  is  the  correct  word  to  use  in  this 
connection)  in  this  capacity  when  I  was  going 
about  Canada  trying  to  raise  some  money  for 
the  relief  of  the  Belgians.  I  travelled  in  great 
glory  with  a  pass  on  the  Canadian  Pacific  Rail- 
way (not  since  extended:  officials  of  the  road 
kindly  note  this)  and  was  most  generously  en- 
tertained wherever  I  went. 

It  was,  therefore,  the  business  of  the  chair- 
man at  such  meetings  as  these  to  try  and  put  a 
special  distinction  or  cachet  on  the  gathering. 
This  is  how  it  was  done : 

"Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  said  the  chairman, 
rising  from  his  seat  on  the  platform  with  a  lit- 
tle bundle  of  papers  in  his  hand,  "before  I  in- 
troduce the  speaker  of  the  evening,  I  have  one 
or  two  items  that  I  want  to  read  to  you."  Here 
he  rustles  his  papers  and  there  is  a  deep  hush 
in  the  hall  while  he  selects  one.  "We  had  hoped 
199 


My  Discovery  of  England 


to  have  with  us  to-night  Sir  Robert  Borden,  the 
Prime  Minister  of  this  Dominion.  I  have  just 
received  a  telegram  from  Sir  Robert  in  which 
he  says  that  he  will  not  be  able  to  be  here" 
(great  applause}.  The  chairman  puts  up  his 
hand  for  silence,  picks  up  another  telegram  and 
continues,  "Our  committee,  ladies  and  gentle- 
men, telegraphed  an  invitation  to  Sir  Wilfrid 
Laurier  very  cordially  inviting  him  to  be  here 
to-night.  I  have  here  Sir  Wilfrid's  answer  in 
which  he  says  that  he  will  not  be  able  to  be  with 
us"  (renewed  applause}.  The  chairman  again 
puts  up  his  hand  for  silence  and  goes  on,  pick- 
ing up  one  paper  after  another.  "The  Minister 
of  Finance  regrets  that  he  will  be  unable  to 
come"  (applause}.  "Mr.  Rodolphe  Lemieux 
(applause}  will  not  be  here  (great  applause} 
— the  Mayor  of  Toronto  (applause}  is  de- 
tained on  business  (wild  applause} — the  Angli- 
can Bishop  of  the  Diocese  (applause} — the 
Principal  of  the  University  College,  Toronto 
(great  applause} — the  Minister  of  Education 
(applause) — none  of  these  are  coming." 
There  is  a  great  clapping  of  hands  and  en- 
200 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

thusiasm,  after  which  the  meeting  is  called  to 
order  with  a  very  distinct  and  palpable  feeling 
that  it  is  one  of  the  most  distinguished  audiences 
ever  gathered  in  the  hall. 

Here  is  another  experience  of  the  same  pe- 
riod while  I  was  pursuing  the  same  exalted  pur- 
pose: I  arrived  in  a  little  town  in  Eastern 
Ontario,  and  found  to  my  horror  that  I  was 
billed  to  "appear"  in  a  church.  I  was  supposed 
to  give  readings  from  my  works,  and  my  books 
are  supposed  to  be  of  a  humorous  character. 
A  church  hardly  seemed  the  right  place  to  get 
funny  in.  I  explained  my  difficulty  to  the  pastor 
of  the  church,  a  very  solemn  looking  man.  He 
nodded  his  head,  slowly  and  gravely,  as  he 
grasped  my  difficulty.  "I  see,"  he  said,  "I  see, 
but  I  think  that  I  can  introduce  you  to  our  peo- 
ple in  such  a  way  as  to  make  that  right." 

When  the  time  came,  he  led  me  up  on  to  the 
pulpit  platform  of  the  church,  just  beside  and 
below  the  pulpit  itself,  with  a  reading  desk  and 
a  big  bible  and  a  shaded  light  beside  it.  It  was 
a  big  church,  and  the  audience,  sitting  in  half 
darkness,  as  is  customary  during  a  sermon, 
201 


My  Discover?/  of  England 


reached  away  back  into  the  gloom.  The  place 
was  packed  full  and  absolutely  quiet.  Then 
the  chairman  spoke: 

"Dear  friends,"  he  said,  "I  want  you  to  un- 
derstand that  it  will  be  all  right  to  laugh  to- 
night. Let  me  hear  you  laugh  heartily,  laugh 
right  out,  just  as  much  as  ever  you  want  to,  be- 
cause" (and  here  his  voice  assumed  the  deep 
sepulchral  tones  of  the  preacher), — "when  we 
think  of  the  noble  object  for  which  the  pro- 
fessor appears  to-night,  we  may  be  assured  that 
the  Lord  will  forgive  any  one  who  will  laugh 
at  the  professor." 

I  am  sorry  to  say,  however,  that  none  of  the 
audience,  even  with  the  plenary  absolution  in 
advance,  were  inclined  to  take  a  chance  on  it. 

I  recall  in  this  same  connection  the  chairman 
of  a  meeting  at  a  certain  town  in  Vermont.  He 
represents  the  type  of  chairman  who  turns  up 
so  late  at  the  meeting  that  the  committee  have 
no  time  to  explain  to  him  properly  what  the 
meeting  is  about  or  who  the  speaker  is.  I  no- 
ticed on  this  occasion  that  he  introduced  me 
very  guardedly  by  name  (from  a  little  card) 
202 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

and  said  nothing  about  the  Belgians,  and  noth- 
ing about* my  being  (supposed  to  be)  a  humour- 
ist. This  last  was  a  great  error.  The  audience, 
for  want  of  guidance,  remained  very  silent  and 
decorous,  and  well  behaved  during  my  talk. 
Then,  somehow,  at  the  end,  while  some  one  was 
moving  a  vote  of  thanks,  the  chairman  discov- 
ered his  error.  So  he  tried  to  make  it  good. 
Just  as  the  audience  were  getting  up  to  put  on 
their  wraps,  he  rose,  knocked  on  his  desk  and 
said: 

"Just  a  minute,  please,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
just  a  minute.  I  have  just  found  out — I  should 
have  known  it  sooner,  but  I  was  late  in  coming 
to  this  meeting — that  the  speaker  who  has  just 
addressed  you  has  done  so  in  behalf  of  the  Bel- 
gian Relief  Fund.  I  understand  that  he  is  a 
well-known  Canadian  humourist  (ha!  ha!)  and 
I  am  sure  that  we  have  all  been  immensely 
amused  (ha  !  ha !) .  He  is  giving  his  delightful 
talks  (ha!  ha!) — though  I  didn't  know  this  till 
just  this  minute — for  the  Belgian  Relief  Fund, 
and  he  is  giving  his  services  for  nothing.  I 
am  sure  when  we  realise  this,  we  shall  all  feel 
203 


My  Discovery  of  England 


that  it  has  been  well  worth  while  to  come.  I 
am  only  sorry  that  we  didn't  have  a  better  turn 
out  to-night.  But  I  can  assure  the  speaker  that 
if  he  will  come  again,  we  shall  guarantee  him  a 
capacity  audience.  And  I  may  say,  that  if  there 
are  any  members  of  this  association  who  have 
not  paid  their  dollar  this  season,  they  can  give 
it  either  to  myself  or  to  Mr.  Sibley  as  they  pass 
out." 

With  the  amount  of  accumulated  experience 
that  I  had  behind  me  I  was  naturally  interested 
during  my  lecture  in  England  in  the  chairmen 
who  were  to  introduce  me.  I  cannot  help  but 
feel  that  I  have  acquired  a  fine  taste  in  chair- 
men. I  know  them  just  as  other  experts  know 
old  furniture  and  Pekinese  dogs.  The  witty 
chairman,  the  prosy  chairman,  the  solemn 
chairman, — I  know  them  all.  As  soon  as  I 
shake  hands  with  the  chairman  in  the  Commit- 
tee room  I  can  tell  exactly  how  he  will  act. 

There  are  certain  types  of  chairmen  who 
have  so  often  been  described  and  are  so  fa- 
miliar that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  linger  on 
them.  Everybody  knows  the  chairman  who 
204 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

says, — "Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  you  have 
not  come  here  to  listen  to  me.  So  I  will  be  very 
brief;  in  fact,  I  will  confine  my  remarks  to  just 
one  or  two  very  short  observations."  He  then 
proceeds  to  make  observations  for  twenty-five 
minutes.  At  the  end  of  it  he  remarks  with 
charming  simplicity,  "Now  I  know  that  you  are 
all  impatient  to  hear  the  lecturer.  ..." 

And  everybody  knows  the  chairman  who 
comes  to  the  meeting  with  a  very  imperfect 
knowledge  of  who  or  what  the  lecturer  is,  and 
is  driven  to  introduce  him  by  saying: 

"Our  lecturer  of  the  evening  is  widely  recog- 
nised as  one  of  the  greatest  authorities  on,— • 
on, — on  his  subject  in  the  world  to-day.  He 
comes  to  us  from, — from  a  great  distance  and 
I  can  assure  him  that  it  is  a  great  pleasure  to 
this  audience  to  welcome  a  man  who  has  done 
so  much  to, — to, — to  advance  the  interests  of, 
— of, — of  everything  as  he  has." 

But  this  man,  bad  as  he  is,  is  not  so  bad  as 

the  chairman  whose  preparation  for  introducing 

the  speaker  has  obviously  been  made  at  the 

eleventh  hour.    Just  such  a  chairman  it  was  my 

205 


My  Discovery  of  England 


fate  to  strike  in  the  form  of  a  local  alderman, 
built  like  an  ox,  in  one  of  those  small  manufac- 
turing places  in  the  north  of  England  where 
they  grow  men  of  this  type  and  elect  them  into 
office. 

"I  never  saw  the  lecturer  before,"  he  said, 
"but  I've  read  his  book."  (I  have  written  nine- 
teen books.)  "The  committee  was  good 
enough  to  send  me  over  his  book  last  night.  I 
didn't  read  it  all  but  I  took  a  look  at  the  pref- 
ace and  I  can  assure  him  that  he  is  very  wel- 
come. I  understand  he  comes  from  a  college. 
.  .  ."  Then  he  turned  directly  towards  me 
and  said  in  a  loud  voice,  "What  was  the  name 
of  that  college  over  there  you  said  you  came 
from?" 

"McGill,"  I  answered  equally  loudly. 

"He  comes  from  McGill,"  the  chairman 
boomed  out.  "I  never  heard  of  McGill  myself 
but  I  can  assure  him  he's  welcome.  He's  going 
to  lecture  to  us  on, — what  did  you  say  it  was  to 
be  about?" 

"It's  a  humorous  lecture,"  I  said. 

"Ay,  it's  to  be  a  humorous  lecture,  ladies 
206 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

and  gentlemen,  and  I'll  venture  to  say  it  will  be 
a  rare  treat.  I'm  only  sorry  I  can't  stay  for  it 
myself  as  I  have  to  get  back  over  to  the  Town 
Hall  for  a  meeting.  So  without  more  ado  I'll 
get  off  the  platform  and  let  the  lecturer  go  on 
with  his  humour." 

A  still  more  terrible  type  of  chairman  is  one 
whose  mind  is  evidently  preoccupied  and  dis- 
turbed with  some  local  happening  and  who 
comes  on  to  the  platform  with  a  face  imprinted 
with  distress.  Before  introducing  the  lecturer 
he  refers  in  moving  tones  to  the  local  sorrow, 
whatever  it  is.  As  a  prelude  to  a  humorous 
lecture  this  is  not  gay. 

Such  a  chairman  fell  to  my  lot  one  night  be- 
fore a  gloomy  audience  in  a  London  suburb. 

"As  I  look  about  this  hall  to-night,"  he  began 
in  a  doleful  whine,  "I  see  many  empty  seats." 
Here  he  stifled  a  sob.  "Nor  am  I  surprised 
that  a  great  many  of  our  people  should  prefer 
to-night  to  stay  quietly  at  home — " 

I  had  no  clue  to  what  he  meant.     I  merely 
gathered  that  some  particular  sorrow  must  have 
overwhelmed  the  town  that  day. 
207 


My  Discovery  of  England 


"To  many  it  may  seem  hardly  fitting  that 
after  the  loss  our  town  has  sustained  we  should 
come  out  here  to  listen  to  a  humorous  lec- 
ture—" 

"What's  the  trouble  ?"  I  whispered  to  a  citi- 
zen sitting  beside  me  on  the  platform. 

"Our  oldest  resident" — he  whispered  back 
— "he  died  this  morning." 

"How  old?" 
Ninety-four,"  he  whispered. 

Meantime  the  chairman,  with  deep  sobs  in 
his  voice,  continued : 

"We  debated  in  our  committee  whether  or 
not  we  should  have  the  lecture.  Had  it  been  a 
lecture  of  another  character  our  position  would 
have  been  less  difficult, — " 

By  this  time  I  began  to  feel  like  a  criminal. 

"The  case  would  have  been  different  had  the 
lecture  been  one  that  contained  information,  or 
that  was  inspired  by  some  serious  purpose,  or 
that  could  have  been  of  any  benefit.  But  this 
is  not  so.  We  understand  that  this  lecture 
which  Mr.  Leacock  has  already  given,  I  believe, 
twenty  or  thirty  times  in  England, — M 
208 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

Here  he  turned  to  me  with  a  look  of  mild  re- 
proval  while  the  silent  audience,  deeply  moved, 
all  looked  at  me  as  at  a  man  who  went  around 
the  country  insulting  the  memory  of  the  dead 
by  giving  a  lecture  thirty  times. 

"We  understand,  though  this  we  shall 
have  an  opportunity  of  testing  for  ourselves 
presently,  that  Mr.  Leacock's  lecture  is  not  of 
a  character  which, — has  not,  so  to  speak,  the 
kind  of  value, — in  short,  is  not  a  lecture  of  that 
class." 

Here  he  paused  and  choked  back  a  sob. 

"Had  our  poor  friend  been  spared  to  us  for 
another  six  years  he  would  have  rounded  out 
the  century.  But  it  was  not  to  be.  For  two  or 
three  years  past  he  has  noted  that  somehow  his 
strength  was  failing,  that,  for  some  reason  or 
other,  he  was  no  longer  what  he  had  been. 
Last  month  he  began  to  droop.  Last  week  he 
began  to  sink.  Speech  left  him  last  Tuesday. 
This  morning  he  passed,  and  he  has  gone  now, 
we  trust,  in  safety  to  where  there  are  no  lec- 
tures." 

The  audience  were  now  nearly  in  tears. 
209 


My  Discovery  of  England 


The  chairman  made  a  visible  effort  towards 
firmness  and  control. 

"But  yet,"  he  continued,  "our  committee  felt 
that  in  another  sense  it  was  our  duty  to  go  on 
with  our  arrangements.  I  think,  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  that  the  war  has  taught  us  all  that 
it  is  always  our  duty  to  'carry  on,1  no  matter 
how  hard  it  may  be,  no  matter  with  what  re- 
luctance we  do  it,  and  whatever  be  the  difficul- 
ties and  the  dangers,  we  must  carry  on  to  the 
end:  for  after  all  there  is  an  end  and  by  resolu- 
tion and  patience  we  can  reach  it. 

"I  will,  therefore,  invite  Mr.  Leacock  to  de- 
liver to  us  his  humorous  lecture,  the  title  of 
which  I  have  forgotten,  but  I  understand  it  to 
be  the  same  lecture  which  he  has  already  given 
thirty  or  forty  times  in  England." 

But  contrast  with  this  melancholy  man  the 
genial  and  pleasing  person  who  introduced  me, 
all  upside  down,  to  a  metropolitan  audience. 

He  was  so  brisk,  so  neat,  so  sure  of  himself 
that  it  didn't  seem  possible  that  he  could  make 
any  kind  of  a  mistake.    I  thought  it  unnecessary 
to  coach  him.    He  seemed  absolutely  all  right. 
210 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

"It  is  a  great  pleasure," — he  said,  with  a 
charming,  easy  appearance  of  being  entirely  at 
home  on  the  platform, — "to  welcome  here  to- 
night our  distinguished  Canadian  fellow  citizen, 
Mr.  Learoyd" — he  turned  half  way  towards  me 
as  he  spoke  with  a  sort  of  gesture  of  welcome, 
admirably  executed.  If  only  my  name  had  been 
Learoyd  instead  of  Leacock  it  would  have  been 
excellent. 

"There  are  many  of  us,"  he  continued, 
"who  have  awaited  Mr.  Learoyd's  coming  with 
the  most  pleasant  anticipations.  We  seemed 
from  his  books  to  know  him  already  as  an  old 
friend.  In  fact  I  think  I  do  not  exaggerate 
when  I  tell  Mr.  Learoyd  that  his  name  in  our 
city  has  long  been  a  household  word.  I  have 
very,  very  great  pleasure,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
in  introducing  to  you  Mr.  Learoyd." 

As  far  as  I  know  that  chairman  never  knew 
his  error.  At  the  close  of  my  lecture  he  said 
that  he  was  sure  that  the  audience  "were  deeply 
indebted  to  Mr.  Learoyd,"  and  then  with  a  few 
words  of  rapid,  genial  apology  buzzed  off,  like 
a  humming  bird,  to  other  avocations.  But  I 
211 


My  Discovery  of  England 


have  amply  forgiven  him :  anything  for  kindness 
and  geniality ;  it  makes  the  whole  of  life  smooth. 
If  that  chairman  ever  comes  to  my  home  town 
he  is  hereby  invited  to  lunch  or  dine  with  me, 
as  Mr.  Learoyd  or  under  any  name  that  he  se- 
lects. 

Such  a  man  is,  after  all,  in  sharp  contrast  to 
the  kind  of  chairman  who  has  no  native  sense  of 
the  geniality  that  ought  to  accompany  his  office. 
There  is,  for  example,  a  type  of  man  who  thinks 
that  the  fitting  way  to  introduce  a  lecturer  is  to 
say  a  few  words  about  the  finances  of  the  society 
to  which  he  is  to  lecture  (for  money)  and  about 
the  difficulty  of  getting  members  to  turn  out 
to  hear  lectures. 

Everybody  has  heard  such  a  speech  a  dozen 
times.  But  it  is  the  paid  lecturer  sitting  on  the 
platform  who  best  appreciates  it.  It  runs  like 
this: 

"Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  before  I  invite 
the  lecturer  of  the  evening  to  address  us  there 
are  a  few  words  that  I  would  like  to  say. 
There  are  a  good  many  members  who  are  in 
arrears  with  their  fees.  I  am  aware  that  these 
212 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

are  hard  times  and  it  is  difficult  to  collect  money 
but  at  the  same  time  the  members  ought  to  re- 
member that  the  expenses  of  the  society  are 
very  heavy.  The  fees  that  are  asked  by  the  lec- 
turers, as  I  suppose  you  know,  have  advanced 
very  greatly  in  the  last  few  years.  In  fact  I 
may  say  that  they  are  becoming  almost  prohibi- 
tive." 

This  discourse  is  pleasant  hearing  for  the 
lecturer.  He  can  see  the  members  who  have 
not  yet  paid  their  annual  dues  eyeing  him  with 
hatred.  The  chairman  goes  on: 

"Our  finance  committee  were  afraid  at  first 
that  we  could  not  afford  to  bring  Mr.  Leacock 
to  our  society.  But  fortunately  through  the 
personal  generosity  of  two  of  our  members  who 
subscribed  ten  pounds  each  out  of  their  own 
pocket  we  are  able  to  raise  the  required  sum." 

(Applause:  during  which  the  lecturer  sits 
looking  and  feeling  like  the  embodiment  of  the 
"required  sum"} 

"Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,"  continues  the 
chairman,  "what  I  feel  is  that  when  we  have 
members  in  the  society  who  are  willing  to  make 
213 


My  Discovery  of  England 


this  sacrifice, — because  it  is  a  sacrifice,  ladies 
and  gentlemen, — we  ought  to  support  them  in 
every  way.  The  members  ought  to  think  it 
their  duty  to  turn  out  to  the  lectures.  I  know 
that  it  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  do.  On  a  cold 
night,  like  this  evening,  it  is  hard,  I  admit  it  is 
hard,  to  turn  out  from  the  comfort  of  one's 
own  fireside  and  come  and  listen  to  a  lecture. 
But  I  think  that  the  members  should  look  at  it 
not  as  a  matter  of  personal  comfort  but  as 
a  matter  of  duty  towards  this  society.  We 
have  managed  to  keep  this  society  alive  for 
fifteen  years  and,  though  I  don't  say  it  in  any 
spirit  of  boasting,  it  has  not  been  an  easy  thing 
to  do.  It  has  required  a  good  deal  of  pretty 
hard  spade  work  by  the  committee.  Well, 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  suppose  you  didn't 
come  here  to  listen  to  me  and  perhaps  I  have 
said  enough  about  our  difficulties  and  trou- 
bles. So  without  more  ado  (this  is  always  a 
favourite  phrase  with  chairmen)  I'll  invite  Mr. 
Leacock  to  address  the  society, — oh,  just  a 
word  before  I  sit  down.  Will  all  those  who 
arc  leaving  before  the  end  of  the  lecture  kindly 
214 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night9' 

go  out  through  the  side  door  and  step  as  quietly 
as  possible?     Mr.  Leacock." 

Anybody  who  is  in  the  lecture  business  knows 
that  that  introduction  is  far  worse  than  being 
called  Mr.  Learoyd. 

When  any  lecturer  goes  across  to  England 
from  this  side  of  the  water  there  is  naturally  a 
tendency  on  the  part  of  the  chairman  to  play 
upon  this  fact.  This  is  especially  true  in  the 
case  of  a  Canadian  like  myself.  *The  chairman 
feels  that  the  moment  is  fitting  for  one  of  those 
great  imperial  thoughts  that  bind  the  British 
Empire  together.  But  sometimes  the  expres- 
sion of  the  thought  falls  short  of  the  full  glory 
of  the  conception. 

Witness  this  (word  for  word)  introduction 
that  was  used  against  me  by  a  clerical  chairman 
in  a  quiet  spot  in  the  south  of  England : 

"Not  so  long  ago,  ladies  and  gentlemen," 
said  the  vicar,  "we  used  to  send  out  to  Canada 
various  classes  of  our  community  to  help  build 
up  that  country.  We  sent  out  our  labourers, 
we  sent  out  our  scholars  and  professors.  In- 
deed we  even  sent  out  our  criminals.  And  now," 
215 


My  Discovery  of  England 


with  a  wave  of  his  hand  towards  me,  "they  are 
coming  back." 

There  was  no  laughter.  An  English  audience 
is  nothing  if  not  literal;  and  they  are  as  polite 
as  they  are  literal.  They  understood  that  I 
was  a  reformed  criminal  and  as  such  they  gave 
me  a  hearty  burst  of  applause. 

But  there  is  just  one  thing  that  I  would  like 
to  chronicle  here  in  favour  of  the  chairman  and 
in  gratitude  for  his  assistance.  Even  at  his 
worst  he  is  far  better  than  having  no  chairman 
at  all.  Over  in  England  a  great  many  societies 
and  public  bodies  have  adopted  the  plan  of 
"cutting  out  the  chairman."  Wearying  of  his 
faults,  they  have  forgotten  the  reasons  for  his 
existence  and  undertaken  to  do  without  him. 

The  result  is  ghastly.  The  lecturer  steps 
up  on  to  the  platform  alone  and  unaccompanied. 
There  is  a  feeble  ripple  of  applause;  he  makes 
his  miserable  bow  and  explains  with  as  much  en- 
thusiasm as  he  can  who  he  is.  The  atmosphere 
of  the  thing  is  so  cold  that  an  Arctic  expedition 
isn't  in  it  with  it.  I  found  also  the  further  dif- 
ficulty that  in  the  absence  of  the  chairman  very 
216 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

often  the  audience,  or  a  large  part  of  it,  doesn't 
know  who  the  lecturer  is.  On  many  occasions 
I  received  on  appearing  a  wild  burst  of  ap- 
plause under  the  impression  that  I  was  some- 
body else.  I  have  been  mistaken  in  this  way  for 
Mr.  Briand,  then  Prime  Minister  of  France, 
for  Charlie  Chaplin,  for  Mrs.  Asquith, — but 
stop,  I  may  get  into  a  libel  suit.  All  I  mean  is 
that  without  a  chairman  "we  celebrities"  get 
terribly  mixed  up  together. 

To  one  experience  of  my  tour  as  a  lecturer 
I  shall  always  be  able  to  look  back  with  satis- 
faction. I  nearly  had  the  pleasure  of  killing  a 
man  with  laughing:  and  this  in  the  most  literal 
sense.  American  lecturers  have  often  dreamed 
of  doing  this.  I  nearly  did  it.  The  man  in 
question  was  a  comfortable  apoplectic-looking 
man  with  the  kind  of  merry  rubicund  face  that 
is  seen  in  countries  where  they  don't  have  pro- 
hibition. He  was  seated  near  the  back  of  the 
hall  and  was  laughing  uproariously.  All  of  a 
sudden  I  realised  that  something  was  happen- 
ing. The  man  had  collapsed  sideways  on  to  the 
floor;  a  little  group  of  men  gathered  about  him; 
217 


My  Discovery  of  England 


they  lifted  him  up  and  I  could  see  them  carrying 
him  out,  a  silent  and  inert  mass.  As  in  duty 
bound  I  went  right  on  with  my  lecture.  But  my 
heart  beat  high  with  satisfaction.  I  was  sure 
that  I  had  killed  him.  The  reader  may  judge 
how  high  these  hopes  rose  when  a  moment  or 
two  later  a  note  was  handed  to  the  chairman 
who  then  asked  me  to  pause  for  a  moment  in 
my  lecture  and  stood  up  and  asked,  "Is  there  a 
doctor  in  the  audience?"  A  doctor  rose  and 
silently  went  out.  The  lecture  continued;  but 
there  was  no  more  laughter;  my  aim  had  now 
become  to  kill  another  of  them  and  they  knew 
it.  They  were  aware  that  if  they  started  laugh- 
ing they  might  die.  In  a  few  minutes  a  second 
note  was  handed  to  the  chairman.  He  an- 
nounced very  gravely,  "A  second  doctor  is 
wanted."  The  lecture  went  on  in  deeper  silence 
than  ever.  All  the  audience  were  waiting  for  a 
third  announcement.  It  came.  A  new  message 
was  handed  to  the  chairman.  He  rose  and  said, 
"If  Mr.  Murchison,  the  undertaker,  is  in  the 
audience,  will  he  kindly  step  outside." 

That  man,  I  regret  to  say,  got  well.     Dis- 
218 


"We  Have  with  Us  To-night" 

appointing  though  it  is  to  read  it,  he  recovered. 
I  sent  back  next  morning  from  London  a  tele- 
gram of  enquiry  (I  did  it  in  reality  so  as  to 
have  a  proper  proof  of  his  death)  and  received 
the  answer,  "Patient  doing  well;  is  sitting  up  in 
bed  and  reading  Lord  Haldane's  Relativity;  no 
danger  of  relapse." 


219 


HAVE  THE  ENGLISH  ANY  SENSE 
OF  HUMOUR? 


X. — Have  the  English  any  Sense 
of  Humour? 

IT  was  understood  that  the  main  object  of 
my  trip  to  England  was  to  find  out  whether 
the  British  people  have  any  sense  of  hu- 
mour.   No  doubt  the  Geographical  Society 
had  this  investigation  in  mind  in  not  paying  my 
expenses.    Certainly  on  my  return  I  was  at  once 
assailed  with  the  question  on  all  sides,  "Have 
they  got  a  sense  of  humour?    Even  if  it  is  only 
a  rudimentary  sense,  have  they  got  it  or  have 
they  not?"     I  propose  therefore  to  address 
myself  to  the  answer  to  this  question. 

A  peculiar  interest  always  attaches  to  hu- 
mour. There  is  no  quality  of  the  human  mind 
about  which  its  possessor  is  more  sensitive  than 
the  sense  of  humour.  A  man  will  freely  con- 
fess that  he  has  no  ear  for  music,  or  no  taste 
for  fiction,  or  even  no  interest  in  religion.  But 
223 


My  Discovery  of  England 


I  have  yet  to  see  the  man  who  announces  that 
he  has  no  sense  of  humour.  In  point  of  fact, 
every  man  is  apt  to  think  himself  possessed  of 
an  exceptional  gift  in  this  direction,  and  that 
even  if  his  humour  does  not  express  itself  in 
the  power  either  to  make  a  joke  or  to  laugh  at 
one,  it  none  the  less  consists  in  a  peculiar  in- 
sight or  inner  light  superior  to  that  of  other 
people. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  nations.  Each 
thinks  its  own  humour  of  an  entirely  superior 
kind,  and  either  refuses  to  admit,  or  admits  re- 
luctantly, the  humorous  quality  of  other  peo- 
ples. The  Englishman  may  credit  the  French- 
man with  a  certain  light  effervescence  of  mind 
which  he  neither  emulates  nor  envies;  the 
Frenchman  may  acknowledge  that  English  liter- 
ature shows  here  and  there  a  sort  of  heavy 
playfulness ;  but  neither  of  them  would  consider 
that  the  humour  of  the  other  nation  could  stand 
a  moment's  comparison  with  his  own. 

Yet,  oddly  enough,  American  humour  stands 
as  a  conspicuous  exception  to  this  general  rule. 
A  certain  vogue  clings  to  it.  Ever  since  the 
224 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

spacious  days  of  Artemus  Ward  and  Mark 
Twain  it  has  enjoyed  an  extraordinary  reputa- 
tion, and  this  not  only  on  our  own  continent, 
but  in  England.  It  was  in  a  sense  the  English 
who  "discovered"  Mark  Twain;  I  mean  it  was 
they  who  first  clearly  recognised  him  as  a  man 
of  letters  of  the  foremost  rank,  at  a  time  when 
academic  Boston  still  tried  to  explain  him  away 
as  a  mere  comic  man  of  the  West.  In  the  same 
way  Artemus  Ward  is  still  held  in  affectionate 
remembrance  in  London,  and,  of  the  later  gen- 
eration, Mr.  Dooley  at  least  is  a  household 
word. 

This  is  so  much  the  case  that  a  sort  of  legend 
has  grown  around  American  humour.  It  is  pre- 
sumed to  be  a  superior  article  and  to  enjoy  the 
same  kind  of  pre-eminence  as  French  cooking, 
the  Russian  ballet,  and  Italian  organ  grinding. 
With  this  goes  the  converse  supposition  that  the 
British  people  are  inferior  in  humour,  that  a 
joke  reaches  them  only  with  great  difficulty, 
and  that  a  British  audience  listens  to  humour  in 
gloomy  and  unintelligent  silence.  People  still 
love  to  repeat  the  famous  story  of  how  John 
225 


My  Discovery  of  England 


Bright  listened  attentively  to  Artemus  Ward's 
lecture  in  London  and  then  said,  gravely,  that 
he  "doubted  many  of  the  young  man's  state- 
ments"; and  readers  still  remember  Mark 
Twain's  famous  parody  of  the  discussion  of  his 
book  by  a  wooden-headed  reviewer  of  an  Eng- 
lish review. 

But  the  legend  in  reality  is  only  a  legend.  If 
the  English  are  inferior  to  Americans  in  hu- 
mour, I,  for  one,  am  at  a  loss  to  see  where  it 
comes  in.  If  there  is  anything  on  our  continent 
superior  in  humour  to  Punch  I  should  like  to  see 
it.  If  we  have  any  more  humorous  writers  in 
our  midst  than  E.  V.  Lucas  and  Charles  Graves 
and  Owen  Seaman  I  should  like  to  read  what 
they  write;  and  if  there  is  any  audience  capable 
of  more  laughter  and  more  generous  apprecia- 
tion than  an  audience  in  London,  or  Bristol,  or 
Aberdeen,  I  should  like  to  lecture  to  it. 

During  my  voyage  of  discovery  in  Great 
Britain  I  had  very  exceptional  opportunities  for 
testing  the  truth  of  these  comparisons.  It  was 
my  good  fortune  to  appear  as  an  avowed  hu- 
mourist in  all  the  great  British  cities.  I  lec- 
226 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

tured  as  far  north  as  Aberdeen  and  as  far  south 
as  Brighton  and  Bournemouth ;  I  travelled  east- 
ward to  Ipswich  and  westward  into  Wales.  I 
spoke  on  serious  subjects,  but  with  a  joke  or 
two  in  loco,  at  the  universities,  at  business  gath- 
erings, and  at  London  dinners;  I  watched,  lost 
in  admiration,  the  inspired  merriment  of  the 
Savages  of  Adelphi  Terrace,  and  in  my  mo- 
ments of  leisure  I  observed,  with  a  scientific  eye, 
the  gaieties  of  the  London  revues.  As  a  result 
of  which  I  say  with  conviction  that,  speaking 
by  and  large,  the  two  communities  are  on  the 
same  level.  A  Harvard  audience,  as  I  have 
reason  gratefully  to  acknowledge,  is  wonderful. 
But  an  Oxford  audience  is  just  as  good.  A 
gathering  of  business  men  in  a  textile  town  in 
the  Midlands  is  just  as  heavy  as  a  gathering  of 
business  men  in  Decatur,  Indiana,  but  no  heav- 
ier; and  an  audience  of  English  schoolboys  as 
at  Rugby  or  at  Clifton  is  capable  of  a  wild  and 
sustained  merriment  not  to  be  outdone  from 
Halifax  to  Los  Angeles. 

There  is,  however,  one  vital  difference  be- 
tween American  and  English  audiences  which 
227 


My  Discovery  of  England 


would  be  apt  to  discourage  at  the  outset  any 
American  lecturer  who  might  go  to  England. 
The  English  audiences,  from  the  nature  of  the 
way  in  which  they  have  been  brought  together, 
expect  more.  In  England  they  still  associate  lec- 
tures with  information.  We  don't.  Our  Amer- 
ican lecture  audiences  are,  in  nine  cases  out  of 
ten,  organised  by  a  woman's  club  of  some  kind 
and  drawn  not  from  the  working  class,  but  from 
— what  shall  we  call  it? — the  class  that  doesn't 
have  to  work,  or,  at  any  rate,  not  too  hard.  It 
is  largely  a  social  audience,  well  educated  with- 
out being  "highbrow,"  and  tolerant  and  kindly 
to  a  degree.  In  fact,  what  the  people  mainly 
want  is  to  see  the  lecturer.  They  have  heard 
all  about  G.  K.  Chesterton  and  Hugh  Walpole 
and  John  Drinkwater,  and  so  when  these  gentle- 
men come  to  town  the  woman's  club  want  to 
have  a  look  at  them,  just  as  the  English  people, 
who  are  all  crazy  about  animals,  flock  to  the 
zoo  to  look  at  a  new  giraffe.  They  don't  expect 
the  giraffe  to  do  anything  in  particular.  They 
want  to  see  it,  that's  all.  So  with  the  American 
woman's  club  audience.  After  they  have  seen 
228 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

Mr.  Chesterton  they  ask  one  another  as  they 
come  out — just  as  an  incidental  matter — "Did 
you  understand  his  lecture  ?"  and  the  answer  is, 
"I  can't  say  I  did."  But  there  is  no  malice 
about  it.  They  can  now  go  and  say  that  they 
have  seen  Mr.  Chesterton;  that's  worth  two 
dollars  in  itself.  The  nearest  thing  to  this  atti- 
tude of  mind  that  I  heard  of  in  England  was 
at  the  City  Temple  in  London,  where  they  have 
every  week  a  huge  gathering  of  about  two  thou- 
sand people,  to  listen  to  a  (so-called)  popular 
lecture.  When  I  was  there  I  was  told  that  the 
person  who  had  preceded  me  was  Lord  Hal- 
dane,  who  had  lectured  on  Einstein's  Theory  of 
Relativity.  I  said  to  the  chairman,  "Surely  this 
kind  of  audience  couldn't  understand  a  lecture 
like  that !"  He  shook  his  head.  "No,"  he  said, 
"they  didn't  understand  it,  but  they  all  enjoyed 
it." 

I  don't  mean  to  imply  by  what  I  said  above 
that  American  lecture  audiences  do  not  appre- 
ciate good  things  or  that  the  English  lecturers 
who  come  to  this  continent  are  all  giraffes.  On 
the  contrary:  when  the  audience  finds  that  Ches- 
229 


My  Discovery  of  England 


terton  and  Walpole  and  Drinkwater,  in  addi- 
tion to  being  visible,  are  also  singularly  interest- 
ing lecturers,  they  are  all  the  better  pleased. 
But  this  doesn't  alter  the  fact  that  they  have 
come  primarily  to  see  the  lecturer. 

Not  so  in  England.  Here  a  lecture  (outside 
London)  is  organised  on  a  much  sterner  foot- 
ing. The  people  are  there  for  information. 
The  lecture  is  organised  not  by  idle,  amiable, 
charming  women,  but  by  a  body  called,  with 
variations,  the  Philosophical  Society.  From  ex- 
perience I  should  define  an  English  Philosophi- 
cal Society  as  all  the  people  in  town  who  don't 
know  anything  about  philosophy.  The  aca- 
demic and  university  classes  are  never  there. 
The  audience  is  only  of  plainer  folk.  In  the 
United  States  and  Canada  at  any  evening  lec- 
ture a  large  sprinkling  of  the  audience  are  in 
evening  dress.  At  an  English  lecture  (outside 
of  London)  none  of  them  are;  philosophy  is 
not  to  be  wooed  in  such  a  garb.  Nor  are 
there  the  same  commodious  premises,  the  same 
bright  lights,  and  the  same  atmosphere  of 
gaiety  as  at  a  society  lecture  in  America.  On 
230 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

the  contrary,  the  setting  is  a  gloomy  one.  In 
England,  in  winter,  night  begins  at  four  in  the 
afternoon.  In  the  manufacturing  towns  of  the 
Midlands  and  the  north  (which  is  where  the 
philosophical  societies  flourish)  there  is  always 
a  drizzling  rain  and  wet  slop  underfoot,  a  be- 
draggled poverty  in  the  streets,  and  a  dimness 
of  lights  that  contrasts  with  the  glare  of  light 
in  an  American  town.  There  is  no  visible  sign 
in  the  town  that  a  lecture  is  to  happen,  no  plac- 
ards, no  advertisements,  nothing.  The  lec- 
turer is  conducted  by  a  chairman  through  a  side 
door  in  a  dingy  building  (The  Institute,  estab- 
lished 1840) ,  and  then  all  of  a  sudden  in  a  huge, 
dim  hall — there  sits  the  Philosophical  Society. 
There  are  a  thousand  of  them,  but  they  sit  as 
quiet  as  a  prayer  meeting.  They  are  waiting 
to  be  fed — on  information. 

Now  I  don't  mean  to  say  that  the  Philosophi- 
cal Society  are  not  a  good  audience.  In  their 
own  way  they're  all  right.  Once  the  Philosophi- 
cal Society  has  decided  that  a  lecture  is  humor- 
ous they  do  not  stint  their  laughter.  I  have  had 
many  times  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  a  Philo- 
231 


My  Discovery  of  England 


sophical  Society  swept  away  from  its  moorings 
and  tossing  in  a  sea  of  laughter,  as  generous 
and  as  whole-hearted  as  anything  we  ever  see  in 
America. 

But  they  are  not  so  willing  to  begin.  With 
us  the  chairman  has  only  to  say  to  the  gaily 
dressed  members  of  the  Ladies'  Fortnightly 
Club,  "Well,  ladies,  I'm  sure  we  are  all  looking 
forward  very  much  to  Mr.  Walpole's  lecture," 
and  at  once  there  is  a  ripple  of  applause,  and  a 
responsive  expression  on  a  hundred  charming 
faces. 

Not  so  the  Philosophical  Society  of  the  Mid- 
lands. The  chairman  rises.  He  doesn't  call 
for  silence.  It  is  there,  thick.  "We  have  with 
us  to-night,"  he  says,  "a  man  whose  name  is 
well  known  to  the  Philosophical  Society"  (here 
he  looks  at  his  card) ,  "Mr.  Stephen  Leacock." 
(Complete  silence.)  "He  is  a  professor  of 
political  economy  at — "  Here  he  turns  to  me 
and  says,  "Which  college  did  you  say?"  I  an- 
swer quite  audibly  in  the  silence,  "At  McGill." 
"He  is  at  McGill,"  says  the  chairman.  (More 
silence.)  "I  don't  suppose,  however,  ladies  and 
232 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

gentlemen,  that  he's  come  here  to  talk  about 
political  economy."  This  is  meant  as  a  jest,  but 
the  audience  takes  it  as  a  threat.  "However, 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  you  haven't  come  here  to 
listen  to  me"  (this  evokes  applause,  the  first  of 
the  evening),  "so  without  more  ado"  (the  man 
always  has  the  impression  that  there's  been  a 
lot  of  "ado"  but  I  never  see  any  of  it)  "I'll  now 
introduce  Mr.  Leacock."  (Complete  silence.) 
Nothing  of  which  means  the  least  harm.  It 
only  implies  that  the  Philosophical  Society  are 
true  philosophers  in  accepting  nothing  un- 
proved. They  are  like  the  man  from  Missouri. 
They  want  to  be  shown.  And  undoubtedly  it 
takes  a  little  time,  therefore,  to  rouse  them.  1 
remember  listening  with  great  interest  to  Sir 
Michael  Sadler,  who  is  possessed  of  a  very  neat 
wit,  introducing  me  at  Leeds.  He  threw  three 
jokes,  one  after  the  other,  into  the  heart  of  a 
huge,  silent  audience  without  effect.  He  might 
as  well  have  thrown  soap  bubbles.  But  the 
fourth  joke  broke  fair  and  square  like  a  bomb 
in  the  middle  of  the  Philosophical  Society  and 
exploded  them  into  convulsions.  The  process 
233 


My  Discovery  of  England 


is  very  like  what  artillery  men  tell  of  "bracket- 
ing" the  object  fired  at,  and  then  landing  fairly 
on  it. 

In  what  I  have  just  written  about  audiences 
I  have  purposely  been  using  the  word  English 
and  not  British,  for  it  does  not  in  the  least  apply 
to  the  Scotch.  There  is,  for  a  humorous  lec- 
turer, no  better  audience  in  the  world  than  a 
Scotch  audience.  The  old  standing  joke  about 
the  Scotch  sense  of  humour  is  mere  nonsense. 
Yet  one  finds  it  everywhere. 

"So  you're  going  to  try  to  take  humour  up  to 
Scotland,"  the  most  eminent  author  in  England 
said  to  me.  "Well,  the  Lord  help  you.  You'd 
better  take  an  axe  with  you  to  open  their  skulls ; 
there  is  no  other  way."  How  this  legend 
started  I  don't  know,  but  I  think  it  is  because 
the  English  are  jealous  of  the  Scotch.  They 
got  into  the  Union  with  them  in  1707  and  they 
can't  get  out.  The  Scotch  don't  want  Home 
Rule,  or  Swa  Raj,  or  Dominion  status,  or  any- 
thing; they  just  want  the  English.  When  they 
want  money  they  go  to  London  and  make  it;  if 
they  want  literary  fame  they  sell  their  books  to 
234 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

the  English;  and  to  prevent  any  kind  of  political 
trouble  they  take  care  to  keep  the  Cabinet  well 
filled  with  Scotchmen.  The  English  for  shame's 
sake  can't  get  out  of  the  Union,  so  they 
retaliate  by  saying  that  the  Scotch  have  no 
sense  of  humour.  But  there's  nothing  in  it. 
One  has  only  to  ask  any  of  the  theatrical  peo- 
ple and  they  will  tell  you  that  the  audiences  in 
Glasgow  and  Edinburgh  are  the  best  in  the 
British  Isles — possess  the  best  taste  and  the 
best  ability  to  recognise  what  is  really  good. 

The  reason  for  this  lies,  I  think,  in  the  well- 
known  fact  that  the  Scotch  are  a  truly  educated 
people,  not  educated  in  the  mere  sense  of  hav- 
ing been  made  to  go  to  school,  but  in  the  higher 
sense  of  having  acquired  an  interest  in  books 
and  a  respect  for  learning.  In  England  the 
higher  classes  alone  possess  this,  the  working 
class  as  a  whole  know  nothing  of  it.  But 
in  Scotland  the  attitude  is  universal.  And  the 
more  I  reflect  upon  the  subject,  the  more  I  be- 
lieve that  what  counts  most  in  the  appreciation 
of  humour  is  not  nationality,  but  the  degree 
of  education  enjoyed  by  the  individual  con- 
235 


My  Discovery  of  England 


cerned.  I  do  not  think  that  there  is  any  doubt 
that  educated  people  possess  a  far  wider  range 
of  humour  than  the  uneducated  class.  Some 
people,  of  course,  get  overeducated  and  become 
hopelessly  academic.  The  word  "highbrow" 
has  been  invented  exactly  to  fit  the  case.  The 
sense  of  humour  in  the  highbrow  has  become 
atrophied,  or,  to  vary  the  metaphor,  it  is  sub- 
merged or  buried  under  the  accumulated  strata 
of  his  education,  on  the  top  soil  of  which  flour- 
ishes a  fine  growth  of  conceit.  But  even  in  the 
highbrow  the  educated  appreciation  of  humour 
is  there — away  down.  Generally,  if  one  at- 
tempts to  amuse  a  highbrow  he  will  resent  it 
as  if  the  process  were  beneath  him;  or  perhaps 
the  intellectual  jealousy  and  touchiness  with 
which  he  is  always  overcharged  will  lead  him  to 
retaliate  with  a  pointless  story  from  Plato.  But 
if  the  highbrow  is  right  off  his  guard  and  has 
no  jealousy  in  his  mind,  you  may  find  him  roar- 
ing with  laughter  and  wiping  his  spectacles, 
with  his  sides  shaking,  and  see  him  converted 
as  by  magic  into  the  merry,  clever  little  school- 
236 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

boy  that  he  was  thirty  years  ago,  before  his 
education  ossified  him. 

But  with  the  illiterate  and  the  rustic  no  such 
process  is  possible.  His  sense  of  humour  may 
be  there  as  a  sense,  but  the  mechanism  for  set- 
ting it  in  operation  is  limited  and  rudimentary. 
Only  the  broadest  and  most  elementary  forms 
of  joke  can  reach  him.  The  magnificent  mech- 
anism of  the  art  of  words  is,  quite  literally,  a 
sealed  book  to  him.  Here  and  there,  indeed, 
a  form  of  fun  is  found  so  elementary  in  its 
nature  and  yet  so  excellent  in  execution  that  it 
appeals  to  all  alike,  to  the  illiterate  and  to  the 
highbrow,  to  the  peasant  and  the  professor. 
Such,  for  example,  are  the  antics  of  Mr.  Charles 
Chaplin  or  the  depiction  of  Mr.  Jiggs  by  the 
pencil  of  George  McManus.  But  such  cases 
are  rare.  As  a  rule  the  cheap  fun  that  excites 
the  rustic  to  laughter  is  execrable  to  the  man  of 
education. 

In  the  light  of  what  I  have  said  before  it  fol- 
lows that  the  individuals  that  are  findable  in 
every  English  or  American  audience  are  much 

237 


My  Discovery  of  England 


the  same.  All  those  who  lecture  or  act  are  well 
aware  that  there  are  certain  types  of  people 
that  are  always  to  be  seen  somewhere  in  the 
hall.  Some  of  these  belong  to  the  general 
class  of  discouraging  people.  They  listen  in 
stolid  silence.  No  light  of  intelligence  ever 
gleams  on  their  faces;  no  response  comes  from 
their  eyes. 

I  find,  for  example,  that  wherever  I  go  there 
is  always  seated  in  the  audience,  about  three 
seats  from  the  front,  a  silent  man  with  a  big 
motionless  face  like  a  melon.  He  is  always 
there.  I  have  seen  that  man  in  every  town  or 
city  from  Richmond,  Indiana,  to  Bournemouth 
in  Hampshire.  He  haunts  me.  I  get  to  ex- 
pect him.  I  feel  like  nodding  to  him  from  the 
platform.  And  I  find  that  all  other  lecturers 
have  the  same  experience.  Wherever  they  go 
the  man  with  the  big  face  is  always  there.  He 
never  laughs;  no  matter  if  the  people  all  round 
him  are  convulsed  with  laughter,  he  sits  there 
like  a  rock — or,  no,  like  a  toad — immovable. 
What  he  thinks  I  don't  know.  Why  he  comes 
to  lectures  I  cannot  guess.  Once,  and  once 
238 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

only,  I  spoke  to  him,  or,  rather,  he  spoke  to  me. 
I  was  coming  out  from  the  lecture  and  found 
myself  close  to  him  in  the  corridor.  It  had 
been  a  rather  gloomy  evening;  the  audience  had 
hardly  laughed  at  all;  and  I  know  nothing  sad- 
der than  a  humorous  lecture  without  laughter. 
The  man  with  the  big  face,  finding  himself  be- 
side me,  turned  and  said,  "Some  of  them  peo- 
ple weren't  getting  that  to-night."  His  tone 
of  sympathy  seemed  to  imply  that  he  had  got  it 
all  himself;  if  so,  he  must  have  swallowed  it 
whole  without  a  sign.  But  I  have  since  thought 
that  this  man  with  the  big  face  may  have  his 
own  internal  form  of  appreciation.  This  much, 
however,  I  know:  to  look  at  him  from  the 
platform  is  fatal.  One  sustained  look  into  his 
big,  motionless  face  and  the  lecturer  would  be 
lost;  inspiration  would  die  upon  one's  lips — 
the  basilisk  isn't  in  it  with  him. 

Personally,  I  no  sooner  see  the  man  with  the 
big  face  than  instinctively  I  turn  my  eyes  away, 
I  look  round  the  hall  for  another  man  that  I 
know  is  always  there,  the  opposite  type,  the 
little  man  with  the  spectacles.  There  he  sits, 
239 


My  Discovery  of  England 


good  soul,  about  twelve  rows  back,  his  large 
spectacles  beaming  with  appreciation  and  his 
quick  face  anticipating  every  point.  I  imag- 
ine him  to  be  by  trade  a  minor  journalist  or  him- 
self a  writer  of  sorts,  but  with  not  enough  of 
success  to  have  spoiled  him. 

There  are  other  people  always  there,  too. 
There  is  the  old  lady  who  thinks  the  lecture 
improper;  it  doesn't  matter  how  moral  it  is, 
she's  out  for  impropriety  and  she  can  find  it 
anywhere.  Then  there  is  another  very  terrible 
man  against  whom  all  American  lecturers  in 
England  should  be  warned — the  man  who  is 
leaving  on  the  9  P.M.  train.  English  rail- 
ways running  into  suburbs  and  near-by  towns 
have  a  schedule  which  is  expressly  arranged 
to  have  the  principal  train  leave  before  the  lec- 
ture ends.  Hence  the  9-P.M.-train  man.  He 
sits  right  near  the  front,  and  at  ten  minutes  to 
nine  he  gathers  up  his  hat,  coat,  and  umbrella 
very  deliberately,  rises  with  great  calm,  and 
walks  firmly  away.  His  air  is  that  of  a  man 
who  has  stood  all  that  he  can  and  can  bear  no 
more.  Till  one  knows  about  this  man,  and 
240 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

the  others  who  rise  after  him,  it  is  very  dis- 
concerting; at  first  I  thought  I  must  have  said 
something  to  reflect  upon  the  royal  family. 
But  presently  the  lecturer  gets  to  understand 
that  it  is  only  the  nine-o'clock  train  and  that  all 
the  audience  know  about  it.  Then  it's  all  right. 
It's  just  like  the  people  rising  and  stretching 
themselves  after  the  seventh  innings  in  base- 
ball. 

In  all  that  goes  above  I  have  been  empha- 
sising the  fact  that  the  British  and  the  Ameri- 
can sense  of  humour  are  essentially  the  same 
thing.  But  there  are,  of  course,  peculiar  dif- 
ferences of  form  and  peculiar  preferences  of 
material  that  often  make  them  seem  to  diverge 
widely. 

By  this  I  mean  that  each  community  has, 
within  limits,  its  own  particular  ways  of  be- 
ing funny  and  its  own  particular  conception 
of  a  joke.  Thus,  a  Scotchman  likes  best  a 
joke  which  he  has  all  to  himself  or  which  he 
shares  reluctantly  with  a  few;  the  thing  is  too 
rich  to  distribute.  The  American  loves  par- 
ticularly as  his  line  of  joke  an  anecdote  with 
241 


My  Discovery  of  England 


the  point  all  concentrated  at  the  end  and  ex- 
ploding in  a  phrase.  The  Englishman  loves 
best  as  his  joke  the  narration  of  something  that 
actually  did  happen  and  that  depends,  of  course, 
for  its  point  on  its  reality. 

There  are  plenty  of  minor  differences,  too, 
in  point  of  mere  form,  and  very  naturally  each 
community  finds  the  particular  form  used  by 
the  others  less  pleasing  than  its  own.  In  fact, 
for  this  very  reason  each  people  is  apt  to  think 
its  own  humour  the  best. 

Thus,  on  our  side  of  the  Atlantic,  to  cite  our 
own  faults  first,  we  still  cling  to  the  supposed 
humour  of  bad  spelling.  We  have,  indeed, 
told  ourselves  a  thousand  times  over  that  bad 
spelling  is  not  funny,  but  is  very  tiresome.  Yet 
it  is  no  sooner  laid  aside  and  buried  than  it 
gets  resurrected.  I  suppose  the  real  reason 
is  that  it  is  funny,  at  least  to  our  eyes.  When 
Bill  Nye  spells  wife  with  "yPn"  we  can't  help 
being  amused.  Now  Bill  Nye's  bad  spelling 
had  absolutely  no  point  to  it  except  its  oddity. 
At  times  it  was  extremely  funny,  but  as  a  mode 
it  led  easily  to  widespread  and  pointless  imi- 
242 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

tation.  It  was  the  kind  of  thing — like  poetry 
— that  anybody  can  do  badly.  It  was  most 
deservedly  abandoned  with  execration.  No 
American  editor  would  print  it  to-day.  But 
witness  the  new  and  excellent  effect  produced 
with  bad  spelHng  by  Mr.  Ring  W.  Lardner. 
Here,  however,  the  case  is  altered ;  it  is  not  the 
falseness  of  Mr.  Lardner's  spelling  that  is  the 
amusing  feature  of  it,  but  the  truth  of  it. 
When  he  writes,  "dear  friend,  Al,  I  would  of 
rote  sooner"  etc.,  he  is  truer  to  actual  sound 
and  intonation  than  the  lexicon.  The  mode  is 
excellent.  But  the  imitations  will  soon  debase 
it  into  such  bad  coin  that  it  will  fail  to  pass  cur- 
rent. In  England,  however,  the  humour  of  bad 
spelling  does  not  and  has  never,  I  believe,  flour- 
ished. Bad  spelling  is  only  used  in  England 
as  an  attempt  to  reproduce  phonetically  a  dia- 
lect; it  is  not  intended  that  the  spelling  itself 
should  be  thought  funny,  but  the  dialect  that  it 
represents.  But  the  effect,  on  the  whole,  is  tire- 
some. A  little  dose  of  the  humour  of  Lanca- 
shire or  Somerset  or  Yorkshire  pronunciation 
may  be  all  right,  but  a  whole  page  of  it  looks 

243 


My  Discovery  of  England 


like  the  gibbering  of  chimpanzees  set  down  on 
paper. 

In  America  also  we  run  perpetually  to  the 
(supposed)  humour  of  slang,  a  form  not  used 
in  England.  If  we  were  to  analyse  what  we 
mean  by  slang  I  think  it  would  be  found  to  con- 
sist of  the  introduction  of  new  metaphors  or 
new  forms  of  language  of  a  metaphorical  char- 
acter, strained  almost  to  the  breaking  point. 
Sometimes  we  do  it  with  a  single  word.  When 
some  genius  discovers  that  a  "hat"  is  really 
only  "a  lid"  placed  on  top  of  a  human  being, 
straightway  the  word  "lid"  goes  rippling  over 
the  continent.  Similarly  a  woman  becomes  a 
"skirt,"  and  so  on  ad  infinitum. 

These  words  presently  either  disappear  or 
else  retain  a  permanent  place,  being  slang  no 
longer.  No  doubt  half  our  words,  if  not  all 
of  them,  were  once  slang.  Even  within  our 
own  memory  we  can  see  the  whole  process  car- 
ried through;  "cinch"  once  sounded  funny;  it 
is  now  standard  American-English.  But  other 
slang  is  made  up  of  descriptive  phrases.  At 
the  best,  these  slang  phrases  are — at  least  we 
244 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

think  they  are — extremely  funny.  But  they 
are  funniest  when  newly  coined,  and  it  takes  a 
master  hand  to  coin  them  well.  For  a  supreme 
example  of  wild  vagaries  of  language  used  for 
humou^  one  might  take  O.  Henry's  "Gentle 
Grafter."  But  here  the  imitation  is  as  easy  as 
it  is  tiresome.  The  invention  of  pointless  slang 
phrases  without  real  suggestion  or  merit  is  one 
of  our  most  familiar  forms  of  factory-made 
humour.  Now  the  English  people  are  apt  to 
turn  away  from  the  whole  field  of  slang.  In 
the  first  place  it  puzzles  them — they  don't  know 
whether  each  particular  word  or  phrase  is  a  sort 
of  idiom  already  known  to  Americans,  or  some- 
thing (as  with  O.  Henry)  never  said  before 
and  to  be  analysed  for  its  own  sake.  The  re- 
sult is  that  with  the  English  public  the  great 
mass  of  American  slang  writing  (genius  apart) 
doesn't  go.  I  have  even  found  English  people 
of  undoubted  literary  taste  repelled  from  such 
a  master  as  O.  Henry  (now  read  by  millions 
in  England)  because  at  first  sight  they  get 
the  impression  that  it  is  "all  American 
slang." 

245 


My  Discovery  of  England 


Another  point  in  which  American  humour, 
or  at  least  the  form  which  it  takes,  differs  not- 
ably from  British,  is  in  the  matter  of  story  tell- 
ing. It  was  a  great  surprise  to  me  the  first 
time  I  went  out  to  a  dinner  party  in  London 
to  find  that  my  host  did  not  open  the  dinner 
by  telling  a  funny  story;  that  the  guests  did  not 
then  sit  silent  trying  to  "think  of  another"; 
that  some  one  did  not  presently  break  silence 
by  saying,  "I  heard  a  good  one  the  other  day," 
— and  so  forth.  And  I  realised  that  in  this 
respect  English  society  is  luckier  than 
ours. 

It  is  my  candid  opinion  that  no  man  ought 
to  be  allowed  to  tell  a  funny  story  or  anecdote 
without  a  license.  We  insist  rightly  enough 
that  every  taxi-driver  must  have  a  license,  and 
the  same  principle  should  apply  to  anybody 
who  proposes  to  act  as  a  raconteur.  Telling 
a  story  is  a  difficult  thing — quite  as  difficult  as 
driving  a  taxi.  And  the  risks  of  failure  and 
accident  and  the  unfortunate  consequences  of 
such  to  the  public,  if  not  exactly  identical,  are, 
at  any  rate,  analogous. 

246 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

This  is  a  point  of  view  not  generally  appre- 
ciated. A  man  is  apt  to  think  that  just  be- 
cause he  has  heard  a  good  story  he  is  able  and 
entitled  to  repeat  it.  He  might  as  well  under- 
take to  do  a  snake  dance  merely  because  he  has 
seen  Madame  Pavlowa  do  one.  The  point  of 
a  story  is  apt  to  lie  in  the  telling,  or  at  least  to 
depend  upon  it  in  a  high  degree.  Certain 
stories,  it  is  true,  depend  so  much  on  the  final 
point,  or  "nub,"  as  we  Americans  call  it,  that 
they  are  almost  fool-proof.  But  even  these 
can  be  made  so  prolix  and  tiresome,  can  be  so 
messed  up  with  irrelevant  detail,  that  the  gen- 
eral effect  is  utter  weariness  relieved  by  a  kind 
of  shock  at  the  end.  Let  me  illustrate  what  I 
mean  by  a  story  with  a  "nub"  or  point.  I  will 
take  one  of  the  best  known,  so  as  to  make  no 
claim  to  originality — for  example,  the  famous 
anecdote  of  the  man  who  wanted  to  be  "put  off 
at  Buffalo."  Here  it  is: 

A  man  entered  a  sleeping-car  and  said  to  the 

porter,  "At  what  time  do  we  get  to  Buffalo?" 

The  porter  answered,  "At  half-past  three  in 

the  morning,  sir."     "All  right,"  the  man  said; 

247 


My  Discovery  of  England 


"now  I  want  to  get  off  at  Buffalo,  and  I  want 
you  to  see  that  I  get  off.  I  sleep  heavily  and 
I'm  hard  to  rouse.  But  you  just  make  me  wake 
up,  don't  mind  what  I  say,  don't  pay  attention 
if  I  kick  about  it,  just  put  me  off,  do  you  see?" 
"All  right,  sir,"  said  the  porter.  The  man  got 
into  his  berth  and  fell  fast  asleep.  He  never 
woke  or  moved  till  it  was  broad  daylight  and 
the  train  was  a  hundred  miles  beyond  Buffalo. 
He  called  angrily  to  the  porter,  "See  here,  you, 
didn't  I  tell  you  to  put  me  off  at  Buffalo?"  The 
porter  looked  at  him,  aghast.  "Well,  I  declare 
to  goodness,  boss!"  he  exclaimed;  "if  it  wasn't 
you,  who  was  that  man  that  I  threw  off  this 
train  at  half -past  three  at  Buffalo?" 

Now  this  story  is  as  nearly  fool-proof  as  can 
be.  And  yet  it  is  amazing  how  badly  it  can  be 
messed  up  by  a  person  with  a  special  gift  for 
mangling  a  story.  He  does  it  something  after 
this  fashion : 

"There  was  a  fellow  got  on  the  train  one 

night  and  he  had  a  berth  reserved  for  Buffalo; 

at  least  the  way  I  heard  it,  it  was  Buffalo, 

though  I  guess,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  you  might 

248 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

tell  it  on  any  other  town  just  as  well — or  no,  I 
guess  he  didn't  have  his  berth  reserved,  he  got 
on  the  train  and  asked  the  porter  for  a  reserva- 
tion for  Buffalo — or,  anyway,  that  part  doesn't 
matter — say  that  he  had  a  berth  for  Buffalo  or 
any  other  place,  and  the  porter  came  through 
and  said,  'Do  you  want  an  early  call?' — or  no, 
he  went  to  the  porter — that  was  it — and 
said—" 

But  stop.  The  rest  of  the  story  becomes  a 
mere  painful  waiting  for  the  end. 

Of  course  the  higher  type  of  funny  story  is 
the  one  that  depends  for  its  amusing  quality  not 
on  the  final  point,  or  not  solely  on  it,  but  on  the 
wording  and  the  narration  all  through.  This 
is  the  way  in  which  a  story  is  told  by  a  comedian 
or  a  person  who  is  a  raconteur  in  the  real  sense. 
When  Sir  Harry  Lauder  narrates  an  incident, 
the  telling  of  it  is  funny  from  beginning  to  end. 
When  some  lesser  person  tries  to  repeat  it 
afterwards,  there  is  nothing  left  but  the  final 
point.  The  rest  is  weariness. 

As  a  consequence  most  story-tellers  are 
driven  to  telling  stories  that  depend  on  the  point 
249 


My  Discovery  of  England 


or  "nub"  and  not  on  the  narration.  The  story- 
teller gathers  these  up  till  he  is  equipped  with 
a  sort  of  little  repertory  of  fun  by  which  he 
hopes  to  surround  himself  with  social  charm. 
In  America  especially  (by  which  I  mean  here 
the  United  States  and  Canada,  but  not  Mexico) 
we  suffer  from  the  story-telling  habit.  As  far 
as  I  am  able  to  judge,  English  society  is  not 
pervaded  and  damaged  by  the  story-telling  habit 
as  much  as  is  society  in  the  United  States  and 
Canada.  On  our  side  of  the  Atlantic  story- 
telling at  dinners  and  on  every  other  social  occa- 
sion has  become  a  curse.  In  every  phase  of 
social  and  intellectual  life  one  is  haunted  by  the 
funny  anecdote.  Any  one  who  has  ever  at- 
tended a  Canadian  or  American  banquet  will 
recall  the  solemn  way  in  which  the  chairman 
rises  and  says:  "Gentlemen,  it  is  to  me  a  very 
great  pleasure  and  a  very  great  honour  to  pre- 
side at  this  annual  dinner.  There  was  an  old 
darky  once — "  and  so  forth.  When  he  con- 
cludes he  says,  "I  will  now  call  upon  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Stooge,  Head  of  the  Provincial  University, 
250 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

to  propose  the  toast  'Our  Dominion.'  "     Dr. 
Stooge  rises  amid  great  applause  and  with  great 
solemnity  begins,  "There  were  once  two  Irish- 
men— "  and  so  on  to  the  end.     But  in  London, 
England,  it  is  apparently  not  so.     Not  long 
ago  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  at  dinner  a 
member  of  the  Government.     I   fully  antici- 
pated that  as  a  member  of  the  Government  he 
would  be  expected  to  tell  a  funny  story  about 
an  old  darky,  just  as  he  would  on  our  side  of 
the  water.     In  fact,  I  should  have  supposed 
that  he  could  hardly  get  into  the  Government 
unless  he  did  tell  a  funny  story  of  some  sort. 
But  all  through  dinner  the  Cabinet  Minister 
never  said  a  word  about  either  a  Methodist 
minister,  or  a  commercial  traveller,  or  an  old 
darky,  or  two  Irishmen,  or  any  of  the  stock 
characters  of  the  American  repertory.     On  an- 
other occasion  I  dined  with  a  bishop  of  the 
Church.     I  expected  that  when  the  soup  came 
he  would  say,   "There  was  an  old  darky — " 
After  which  I  should  have  had  to  listen  with 
rapt  attention,  and,  when  he  had  finished,  with- 
251 


My  Discovery  of  England 


out  any  pause,  rejoin,  "There  were  a  couple  of 
Irishmen  once — "  and  so  on.  But  the  bishop 
never  said  a  word  of  the  sort. 

I  can  further,  for  the  sake  of  my  fellow-men 
in  Canada  and  the  United  States  who  may  think 
of  going  to  England,  vouchsafe  the  following 
facts:  If  you  meet  a  director  of  the  Bank  of 
England,  he  does  not  say:  "I  am  very  glad 
to  meet  you.  Sit  down.  There  was  a  mule  in 
Arkansas  once,"  etc.  How  they  do  their  bank- 
ing without  that  mule  I  don't  know.  But  they 
manage  it.  I  can  certify  also  that  if  you  meet 
the  proprietor  of  a  great  newspaper  he  will  not 
begin  by  saying,  "There  was  a  Scotchman  once." 
In  fact,  in  England,  you  can  mingle  freely  in 
general  society  without  being  called  upon  either 
to  produce  a  funny  story  or  to  suffer  from  one. 

I  don't  mean  to  deny  that  the  American 
funny  story,  in  capable  hands,  is  amazingly 
funny  and  that  it  does  brighten  up  human  in- 
tercourse. But  the  real  trouble  lies,  not  in  the 
fun  of  the  story,  but  in  the  painful  waiting  for 
the  point  to  come  and  in  the  strained  and  anx- 
ious silence  that  succeeds  it.  Each  person 
252 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

around  the  dinner  table  is  trying  to  "think  of 
another."  There  is  a  dreadful  pause.  The 
hostess  puts  up  a  prayer  that  some  one  may 
"think  of  another."  Then  at  last,  to  the  re- 
lief of  everybody,  some  one  says:  "I  heard  a 
story  the  other  day — I  don't  know  whether 
you've  heard  it — "  And  the  grateful  cries  of 
"No!  no!  go  ahead"  show  how  great  the 
tension  has  been. 

Nine  times  out  of  ten  the  people  have  heard 
the  story  before ;  and  ten  times  out  of  nine  the 
teller  damages  it  in  the  telling.  But  his  hearers 
are  grateful  to  him  for  having  saved  them  from 
the  appalling  mantle  of  silence  and  introspec- 
tion which  had  fallen  upon  the  table.  For  the 
trouble  is  that  when  once  two  or  three  stories 
have  been  told  it  seems  to  be  a  point  of  honour 
not  to  subside  into  mere  conversation.  It  seems 
rude,  when  a  story-teller  has  at  last  reached  the 
triumphant  ending  and  climax  of  the  mule  from 
Arkansas,  it  seems  impolite,  to  follow  it  up  by 
saying,  "I  see  that  Germany  refuses  to  pay  the 
indemnity."  It  can't  be  done.  Either  the  mule 
or  the  indemnity — one  can't  have  both. 
253 


My  Discovery  of  England 


The  English,  I  say,  have  not  developed  the 
American  custom  of  the  funny  story  as  a  form 
of  social  intercourse.  But  I  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  they  are  sinless  in  this  respect.  As  I 
see  it,  they  hand  round  in  general  conversation 
something  nearly  as  bad  in  the  form  of  what 
one  may  call  the  literal  anecdote  or  personal 
experience.  By  this  I  refer  to  the  habit  of  nar- 
rating some  silly  little  event  that  has  actually 
happened  to  them  or  in  their  sight,  which  they 
designate  as  "screamingly  funny,"  and  which 
was  perhaps  very  funny  when  it  happened  but 
which  is  not  the  least  funny  in  the  telling.  The 
American  funny  story  is  imaginary.  It  never 
happened.  Somebody  presumably  once  made 
it  up.  It  is  fiction.  Thus  there  must  once  have 
been  some  great  palpitating  brain,  some  glow- 
ing imagination,  which  invented  the  story  of  the 
man  who  was  put  off  at  Buffalo.  But  the  Eng- 
lish "screamingly  funny"  story  is  not  imaginary. 
It  really  did  happen.  It  is  an  actual  personal 
experience.  In  short,  it  is  not  fiction  but  his- 
tory. 

I  think — if  one  may  say  it  with  all  respect — • 
254 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

that  in  English  society  girls  and  women  are 
especially  prone  to  narrate  these  personal  ex- 
periences as  contributions  to  general  merriment 
rather  than  the  men.  The  English  girl  has  a 
sort  of  traditional  idea  of  being  amusing;  the 
English  man  cares  less  about  it.  He  prefers 
facts  to  fancy  every  time,  and  as  a  rule  is  free 
from  that  desire  to  pose  as  a  humourist  which 
haunts  the  American  mind.  So  it  comes  about 
that  most  of  the  "screamingly  funny"  stories 
are  told  in  English  society  by  the  women. 
Thus  the  counterpart  of  "put  me  off  at  Buf- 
falo" done  into  English  would  be  something 
like  this :  "We  were  so  amused  the  other  night 
in  the  sleeping-car  going  to  Buffalo.  There 
was  the  most  amusing  old  negro  making  the 
beds,  a  perfect  scream,  you  know,  and  he  kept 
insisting  that  if  we  wanted  to  get  up  at  Buffalo 
we  must  all  go  to  bed  at  nine  o'clock.  He 
positively  wouldn't  let  us  sit  u{> — I  mean  to  say 
it  was  killing  the  way  he  wanted  to  put  us  to 
bed.  We  all  roared!" 

Please  note  that  roar  at  the  end  of  the  Eng- 
lish personal  anecdote.     It  is  the  sign  that  in- 

255 


My  Discovery  of  England 


dicates  that  the  story  is  over.  When  you  are 
assured  by  the  narrators  that  all  the  persons 
present  "roared"  or  "simply  roared,"  then 
you  can  be  quite  sure  that  the  humorous  incident 
is  closed  and  that  laughter  is  in  place. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  scene  with  the 
darky  porter  may  have  been,  when  it  really 
happened,  most  amusing.  But  not  a  trace  of 
it  gets  over  in  the  story.  There  is  nothing  but 
the  bare  assertion  that  it  was  "screamingly 
funny"  or  "simply  killing."  But  the  English 
are  such  an  honest  people  that  when  they  say 
this  sort  of  thing  they  believe  one  another  and 
they  laugh. 

But,  after  all,  why  should  people  insist  on 
telling  funny  stories  at  all?  Why  not  be  con- 
tent to  buy  the  works  of  some  really  first-class 
humourist  and  read  them  aloud  in  proper  hu- 
mility of  mind  without  trying  to  emulate  them? 
Either  that  or  talk  theology. 

On  my  own  side  of  the  Atlantic  I  often  mar- 
vel at  our  extraordinary  tolerance  and  courtesy 
to  one  another  in  the  matter  of  story- telling. 
I  have  never  seen  a  bad  story-teller  thrown 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

forcibly  out  of  the  room  or  even  stopped  and 
warned;  we  listen  with  the  most  wonderful  pa- 
tience to  the  worst  of  narration.  The  story 
is  always  without  any  interest  except  in  the  un- 
known point  that  will  be  brought  in  later.  But 
this,  until  it  does  come,  is  no  more  interesting 
than  to-morrow's  breakfast.  Yet  for  some 
reason  or  other  we  permit  this  story-telling 
habit  to  invade  and  damage  our  whole  social 
life.  The  English  always  criticise  this  and 
think  they  are  absolutely  right.  To  my  mind 
in  their  social  life  they  give  the  "funny  story" 
its  proper  place  and  room  and  no  more.  That 
is  to  say — if  ten  people  draw  their  chairs  in 
to  the  dinner  table  and  somebody  really  has 
just  heard  a  story  and  wants  to  tell  it,  there  is 
no  reason  against  it.  If  he  says,  "Oh,  by  the 
way,  I  heard  a  good  story  to-day,"  it  is  just 
as  if  he  said,  "Oh,  by  the  way,  I  heard  a  piece 
of  news  about  John  Smith."  It  is  quite  ad- 
missible as  conversation.  But  he  doesn't  sit 
down  to  try  to  think,  along  with  nine  other  rival 
thinkers,  of  all  the  stories  that  he  had  heard, 
and  that  makes  all  the  difference. 
257 


My  Discovery  of  England 


The  Scotch,  by  the  way,  resemble  us  in  lik- 
ing to  tell  and  hear  stories.  But  they  have 
their  own  line.  They  like  the  stories  to  be 
grim,  dealing  in  a  jocose  way  with  death  and 
funerals.  The  story  begins  (will  the  reader 
kindly  turn  it  into  Scotch  pronunciation  for 
himself),  "There  was  a  Sandy  MacDonald  had 
died  and  the  wife  had  the  body  all  laid  out  for 
burial  and  dressed  up  very  fine  in  his  best  suit," 
etc.  Now  for  me  that  beginning  is  enough. 
To  me  that  is  not  a  story,  but  a  tragedy.  I  am 
so  sorry  for  Mrs.  MacDonald  that  I  can't  think 
of  anything  else.  But  I  think  the  explanation 
is  that  the  Scotch  are  essentially  such  a  devout 
people  and  live  so  closely  within  the  shadow  of 
death  itself  that  they  may  without  irreverence 
or  pain  jest  where  our  lips  would  falter.  Or 
else,  perhaps  they  don't  care  a  cuss  whether 
Sandy  MacDonald  died  or  not.  Take  it  either 
way. 

But  I  am  tired  of  talking  of  our  faults.  Let 
me  turn  to  the  more  pleasing  task  of  discussing 
those  of  the  English.  In  the  first  place,  and 
as  a  minor  matter  of  form,  I  think  that  English 

258 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

humour  suffers  from  the  tolerance  afforded  to 
the  pun.  For  some  reason  English  people  find 
puns  funny.  We  don't.  Here  and  there,  no 
doubt,  a  pun  may  be  made  that  for  some  excep- 
tional reason  becomes  a  matter  of  genuine  wit. 
But  the  great  mass  of  the  English  puns  that  dis- 
figure the  Press  every  week  are  mere  pointless 
verbalisms  that  to  the  American  mind  cause 
nothing  but  weariness. 

But  even  worse  than  the  use  of  puns  is  the 
peculiar  pedantry,  not  to  say  priggishness,  that 
haunts  the  English  expression  of  humour.  To 
make  a  mistake  in  a  Latin  quotation  or  to  stick 
on  a  wrong  ending  to  a  Latin  word  is  not  really 
an  amusing  thing.  To  an  ancient  Roman,  per- 
haps, it  might  be.  But  then  we  are  not  an- 
cient Romans;  indeed,  I  imagine  that  if  an 
ancient  Roman  could  be  resurrected,  all  the 
Latin  that  any  of  our  classical  scholars  can  com- 
mand would  be  about  equivalent  to  the  French 
of  a  cockney  waiter  on  a  Channel  steamer.  Yet 
one  finds  even  the  immortal  Punch  citing  re- 
cently as  a  very  funny  thing  a  newspaper  mis- 
quotation of  "urbis  et  orbis"  instead  of  "urbi 
259 


My  Discovery  of  England 


et  orbos,"  or  the  other  way  round.  I  forget 
which.  Perhaps  there  was  some  further  point 
in  it  that  I  didn't  see,  but,  anyway,  it  wasn't 
funny.  Neither  is  it  funny  if  a  person,  instead 
of  saying  Archimedes,  says  Archimeeds;  why 
shouldn't  it  have  been  Archimeeds?  The  Eng- 
lish scale  of  values  in  these  things  is  all  wrong. 
Very  few  Englishmen  can  pronounce  Chicago 
properly  and  they  think  nothing  of  that.  But 
if  a  person  mispronounces  the  name  of  a  Greek 
village  of  what  O.  Henry  called  "The  Year 
B.C."  it  is  supposed  to  be  excruciatingly  funny. 
I  think  in  reality  that  this  is  only  a  part  of 
the  overdone  scholarship  that  haunts  so  much 
of  English  writing — not  the  best  of  it,  but  a 
lot  of  it.  It  is  too  full  of  allusions  and  in- 
direct references  to  all  sorts  of  extraneous  facts. 
The  English  writer  finds  it  hard  to  say  a  plain 
thing  in  a  plain  way.  He  is  too  anxious  to 
show  in  every  sentence  what  a  fine  scholar  he 
is.  He  carries  in  his  mind  an  accumulated 
treasure  of  quotations,  allusions,  and  scraps  and 
tags  of  history,  and  into  this,  like  Jack  Horner, 
he  must  needs  "stick  in  his  thumb  and  pull  out 

260 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

a  plum."  Instead  of  saying,  "It  is  a  fine  morn- 
ing," he  prefers  to  write,  "This  is  a  day  of 
which  one  might  say  with  the  melancholy 
Jacques,  it  is  a  fine  morning." 

Hence  it  is  that  many  plain  American  read- 
ers find  English  humour  "highbrow."  Just  as 
the  English  are  apt  to  find  our  humour  "slangy" 
and  "cheap,"  so  we  find  theirs  academic  and 
heavy.  But  the  difference,  after  all,  is  of  far 
less  moment  than  might  be  supposed.  It  lies 
only  on  the  surface.  Fundamentally,  as  I  said 
in  starting,  the  humour  of  the  two  peoples  is 
of  the  same  kind  and  on  an  equal  level. 

There  is  one  form  of  humour  which  the  Eng- 
lish have  more  or  less  to  themselves,  nor  do  I 
envy  it  to  them.  I  mean  the  merriment  that 
they  appear  able  to  draw  out  of  the  criminal 
courts.  To  me  a  criminal  court  is  a  place  of 
horror,  and  a  murder  trial  the  last  word  in  hu- 
man tragedy.  The  English  criminal  courts  I 
know  only  from  the  newspapers  and  ask  no 
nearer  acquaintance.  But  according  to  the 
newspapers  the  courts,  especially  when  a  mur- 
der case  is  on,  are  enlivened  by  flashes  of  ju- 

261 


My  Discovery  of  England 


dicial  and  legal  humour  that  seem  to  meet  with 
general  approval.  The  current  reports  in  the 
Press  run  like  this: 

"The  prisoner,  who  is  being  tried  on  a  charge 
of  having  burned  his  wife  to  death  in  a  furnace, 
was  placed  in  the  dock  and  gave  his  name  as 
Evans.  Did  he  say  'Evans  or  Ovens?'  asked 
Mr.  Justice  Blank.  The  court  broke  into  a 
roar,  in  which  all  joined  but  the  prisoner.  .  .  ." 
Or  take  this:  "How  many  years  did  you  say 
you  served  the  last  time?"  asked  the  judge. 
"Three,"  said  the  prisoner.  "Well,  twice 
three  is  six,"  said  the  judge,  laughing  till  his 
sides  shook;  "so  I'll  give  you  six  years." 

I  don't  say  that  those  are  literal  examples  of 
the  humour  of  the  criminal  court.  But  they 
are  close  to  it.  For  a  judge  to  joke  is  as  easy 
as  it  is  for  a  schoolmaster  to  joke  in  his  class. 
His  unhappy  audience  has  no  choice  but  laugh- 
ter. No  doubt  in  point  of  intellect  the  Eng- 
lish judges  and  the  bar  represent  the  most 
highly  trained  product  of  the  British  Empire. 
But  when  it  comes  to  fun,  they  ought  not  to 
pit  themselves  against  the  unhappy  prisoner. 

262 


Have  English  Any  Sense  of  Humour? 

Why  not  take  a  man  of  their  own  size?  For 
true  amusement  Mr.  Charles  Chaplin  or  Mr. 
Leslie  Henson  could  give  them  sixty  in  a  hun- 
dred. I  even  think  I  could  myself. 

One  final  judgment,  however,  might  with  due 
caution  be  hazarded.  I  do  not  think  that,  on 
the  whole,  the  English  are  quite  as  fond  of 
humour  as  we  are.  I  mean  they  are  not  so  will- 
ing to  welcome  at  all  times  the  humorous  point 
of  view  as  we  are  in  America.  The  English 
are  a  serious  people,  with  many  serious  things 
to  think  of — football,  horse  racing,  dogs,  fish, 
and  many  other  concerns  that  demand  much 
national  thought:  they  have  so  many  national 
preoccupations  of  this  kind  that  they  have  less 
need  for  jokes  than  we  have.  They  have 
higher  things  to  talk  about,  whereas  on  our 
side  of  the  water,  except  when  the  World's 
Series  is  being  played',  we  have  few,  if  any, 
truly  national  topics. 

And  yet  I  know  that  many  people  in  England 
would  exactly  reverse  this  last  judgment  and 
say  that  the  Americans  are  a  desperately  seri- 
ous people.  That  in  a  sense  is  true.  Any 
263 


My  Discovery  of  England 


American  who  takes  up  with  an  idea  such  as 
New  Thought,  Psychoanalysis  or  Eating  Saw- 
dust, or  any  "uplift"  of  the  kind  becomes  des- 
perately lopsided  in  his  seriousness,  and  as  a 
very  large  number  of  us  cultivate  New  Thought, 
or  practise  breathing  exercises,  or  eat  sawdust, 
no  doubt  the  English  visitors  think  us  a  des- 
perate lot. 

Anyway,  it's  an  ill  business  to  criticise  an- 
other people's  shortcomings.  What  I  said  at 
the  start  was  that  the  British  are  just  as  hu- 
morous as  are  the  Americans,  or  the  Canadians, 
or  any  of  us  across  the  Atlantic,  and  for  greater 
certainty  I  repeat  it  at  the  end. 


264 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

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